BX  7260  .A2  A3  1915  c.l 
Abbott,  Lyman,  1835-1922 
Reminiscences 


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REMINISCENCES.     Illustrated. 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  DEMOCRACY. 

THE  HOME  BUILDER. 

THE  CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

HENRY  WARD  BEECHER.      With  Portraits. 

THE  RIGHTS  OF  MAN.     A  Study  in  Twentieth- 
Century  Problems. 

THE    LIFE   AND    LITERATURE    OF    THE    AN- 
CIENT HEBREWS. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 
CHRISTIANITY  AND   SOCIAL  PROBLEMS. 
THE  THEOLOGY  OF  AN   EVOLUTIONIST. 
THE    LIFE    AND    LETTERS    OF    PAUL    THE 
APOSTLE. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Boston  and  New  York 


REMINISCENCES 


REMINISCENCES 


/ 
By  LYMAN  ABBOTT 

WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 


^MAY    5    1955  _^ 


COPYRIGHT,    I9I4  AND   iglj,   BY   THE  OUTLOOK   COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT,    1915,    BY    LYMAN   ABBOTT 

ALL    RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  November  iqis 


TO 
MY   CHILDREN 

WITHOUT   WHOSE   ENCOURAGEMENT  THIS 

WORK  WOULD   NEVER   HAVE   BEEN   UNDERTAKEN 

WITHOUT   WHOSE   COOPERATION    IT   COULD 

NEVEB   HAVE  BEEN   COMPLETED 


PREFACE 

DURING  the  sixty  years  since  my  graduation 
from  the  New  York  University  in  1853,  a  great 
Civil  War  has  been  waged;  slavery  has  been 
abolished;  temperance  reform  has  been  pushed  forward 
with  various  experiments  —  total  abstinence,  high  li- 
cense, State-wide  prohibition,  local  option;  the  public 
school  system  has  been  extended  throughout  the  Nation ; 
the  high  school  and  the  State  University  have  been  de- 
veloped; woman's  higher  education  has  been  initiated 
and  women's  colleges  have  been  founded;  industrial  and 
vocational  education  has  been  established ;  the  factory  sys- 
tem has  developed  into  an  enormous  industrial  organiza- 
tion, practically  superseding  the  old  individual  industries, 
and  creating  a  wage-system,  with  gigantic  combina- 
tions of  capital  working  in  competition  and  sometimes 
in  hot  antagonism  with  gigantic  combinations  of  labor; 
the  transcontinental  railways  have  been  built,  binding  to- 
gether a  Republic  extending  from  the  Pacific  to  the  Atlan- 
tic Coast;  the  candles  and  whale-oil  lamps  of  my  child- 
hood have  been  replaced,  first  by  kerosene  oil,  then  by  gas, 
then  by  electricity;  cholera  and  yellow  fever  have  been 
abolished ;  the  campaign  against  the  hookworm  and  against 
tuberculosis  has  been  begun ;  sanitary  engineering  has  been 
created;  the  use  of  anaesthetics  has  enabled  surgery  to 
accomplish  the  impossible;  the  discovery  of  germs  as  the 
origin  of  many  diseases  has  created  a  new  science  of  medi- 
cine; philosophy  and  theology  have  been  revolutionized 
by  the  doctrine  of  evolution;  the  antiquity  of  man  has 
been  carried  back  thousands  of  years  by  scientific  dis- 
covery; for  the  fall  of  man  and  his  recovery  has  been  sub- 


viii  PREFACE 

stituted  the  ascent  of  man  from  a  previous  animal  order; 
for  the  conception  of  God  as  a  King,  the  conception  of 
God  as  a  Father;  for  the  conception  of  salvation  as  the 
rescue  of  the  elect  from  a  lost  world,  the  conception  of 
the  transformation  of  the  world  itself  into  a  human 
Brotherhood,  a  conception  which  is  the  inspiration  of  the 
great  world-wide  democratic  movement. 

In  this  world  movement  I  have  had  a  minor  part:  for 
forty  years  as  a  journalist  reporting  current  history  from 
week  to  week;  not  a  leader  discovering  and  teaching  new 
truth,  but  an  historian  endeavoring  to  interpret  to  itself 
the  growing  thought  of  the  age,  and  to  indicate  the  di- 
rection in  which  we  were  all,  sometimes  unconsciously, 
moving. 

This  work  has  naturally  given  me  some  acquaintance 
with  the  leaders  of  thought  and  action.  My  inspira- 
tion to  the  ministry  came  chiefly  from  three  prophetic 
spirits  —  Charles  G.  Finney,  the  apostle  of  the  freedom 
of  the  will  to  a  church  paralyzed  by  fatalism;  Horace 
Bushnell,  the  apostle  of  spiritual  faith  to  a  church  per- 
plexed between  rationalism  and  transcendentalism;  and 
preeminently  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  the  apostle  of  love  to 
a  church  the  inspiration  of  whose  religious  life  had  been 
a  severe  and  sometimes  cruel  conscience.  Though  I  was 
never  an  active  temperance  reformer,  my  acquaintance 
with  the  temperance  movement  was  such  that  at  the 
request  of  Mr.  John  B.  Gough  I  wrote  a  sketch  of  his  life 
to  accompany  a  volume  of  his  writings.  Not  active  in  the 
revivals  of  the  age,  my  acquaintance  with  the  revival 
movement  was  such  that  after  the  death  of  Dwight  L. 
Moody  I  wrote,  at  the  request  of  the  family,  a  sketch  of 
his  life  to  accompany  a  similar  volume  of  his  writings. 
Most  of  the  great  orators  of  America  of  the  last  half- 
century  I  have  met,  a  few  of  them  I  have  known  more 


PREFACE  ix 

ot  less  intimately.  My  sympathies  have  been  for  the 
most  part  neither  with  the  radicals  nor  with  the  reaction- 
aries, but  with  the  progressives  in  every  reform.  I  have 
been  an  evolutionist,  but  not  a  Darwinian ;  a  Liberal,  but 
not  an  Agnostic;  an  Anti-slavery  man,  but  not  an  Abo- 
litionist; a  temperance  man,  but  not  a  Prohibitionist;  an 
Industrial  Democrat,  but  not  a  Socialist. 

Never  having  kept  a  journal  nor  even  a  diary  nor 
copies  of  my  letters,  nor  systematically  and  regularly 
the  letters  written  to  me,  and  always  more  interested  in 
what  I  hoped  to  do  to-morrow  than  in  what  I  did  yester- 
day, I  could  not  write  a  history  of  our  times,  nor  even  an 
autobiography.  But  I  have  written  these  Reminiscences 
in  the  hope  that  the  simple  account  of  what  one  man, 
without  pretension  to  either  genius  or  notable  scholar- 
ship, has  been  able  to  do  in  aiding  his  fellow-men  to 
just  conclusions  and  right  action  in  troublous  times,  may 
be  of  use  to  others  who,  coming  after  him,  will  be  called 
on  to  meet  similar  difficulties  and  solve  similar  problems. 


Lyman  Abbott. 


The  Knoll, 

CORNWALL-ON-HUDSON,   NeW   YoRK, 

July,  1915. 


CONTENTS 

Bibliography xv 

I.  I  INTRODUCE  Myself  to  My  Readers     ....      1 

n.  New  York  City  in  1850 23 

m.  An  American  College  in  1850 43 

rV.  Love  and  Law 72 

V.  Politics 95 

VI.  A  Turning-Point  in  My  Life 113 

VII.  My  Father 141 

Vin.  Fewacres  Theological  Seminary 159 

IX.  A  Mid-Western  Parish  during  the  Civil  War       .  187 

X.  Pastor  and  Preacher 214 

XI.  Reconstruction:  The  Problem 233 

Xn.  Reconstruction:  Efforts  for  its  Solution       .      .  257 

Xm.  Disappointment 278 

XIV.  Beginning  again 298 

XV.  The  New  Journalism 326 

XVI.  Plymouth  Church 351 

XVn.  An  Industrial  Revolution 389 

XVlil.  A  Political  Revolution 420 

XIX.  A  Religious  Revolution 447 

XX.  Looking  Forward 487 

Index 495 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Lyman  Abbott  at  his  Desk  in  the  Office  of  the  "Out- 
look" (Photogravure) Frontispiece 

Photograph  by  H.  H.  Moore 

Jacob  Abbot,  the  Author's  Grandfather        ....      6 

Jacob  Abbott,  the  Author's  Father 6 

Silhouette  of  Harriet  Vaughan,  who  became  the  Wife 
OF  Jacob  Abbott  and  Mother  of  the  Author    ...     24 

The  Three  Second  Mothers  :  Mrs.  Elbridge  Cutler 
("Aunt  Clara"),  Mrs.  John  S,  C.  Abbott  ("Aunt 
Jane"),  Mrs.  Charles  E.  Abbott  ("Aunt  Elizabeth")     40 

Mrs.  Lyman  Abbott  at  Sixteen 74 

Lyman  Abbott  about  1855 114 

Henry  Ward  Beecher  in  the  Fifties 120 

Photograph  by  M.  B.  Brady.    From  the  collection  of  Frederick  Hill  Meserve,  of 

New  York. 

The  Fewacres  Homestead  at  Farmington,  Maine        .      .  160 

Photograph  by  G.  D.  Merrill,  Farmington 

The  Congregational  Meeting-House  in  Temple,  Maine     .  176 
Lyman  Abbott 272 

From  a  photograph  taken  in  the  later  sixties. 

Lawson  Valentine 340 

Drawn  by  V.  Gribayedoff  and  first  printed  in  the  Christian  Union  for  May  14,  1891 

The  Three  Brothers  of  Lyman  Abbott  :  Benjamin  Vaughan 
Abbott  (about  1888),  Austin  Abbott  (May,  1894),  Edward 
Abbott  (1887) 424 

Dr.  and  Mrs.  Abbott  at  their  Fireside 488 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  following  list  contains  all  the  books  of  any  importance 
which  I  have  written  and  which  are  still  in  print  and  obtain- 
able, arranged  in  the  order  of  the  date  of  their  publication. 

1875.  Commentary  on  the  New  Testament.  Matthew  to  Romans. 

The  A.  S.  Barnes  Company,  New  York. 
1886.  In  Aid  of  Faith.   E.  P.  Button  &  Company,  New  York. 

1892.  Evolution  of  Christianity.    Houghton  MiflElin  Company, 

Boston. 

1893.  Plymouth  Hymnal.   The  A.  S.  Barnes  Company,  New 

York. 

1896.  Christianity   and   Social   Problems.    Houghton   Mifflin 

Company,  Boston. 

1897.  The    Theology   of  an   Evolutionist.    Houghton    Mifflin 

Company,  Boston. 

1898.  Life  and  Letters  of  Paul.    Houghton  Mifflin  Company, 

Boston. 
1901.  Life  and  Literature  of  the  Ancient  Hebrews.   Houghton 

Mifflin  Company,  Boston. 
1901.  The  Rights  of  Man.  Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  Boston. 
1903.  The  Other  Room.  The  Macmillan  Company,  New  York. 

1903.  Life  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher.    Houghton  Mifflin  Com- 

pany, Boston. 

1904.  The  Great  Companion.    The  Macmillan  Company,  New 

York. 

1905.  The  Christian  Ministry.    Houghton  Mifflin  Company, 

Boston. 
1908.  The  Hom,e  Builder.  Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  Boston. 

1910.  The  Spirit  of  Democracy.     Houghton  Mifflin  Company, 

Boston. 

1911.  The  Four  Anchors.  The  Pilgrim  Press,  Boston. 

1911.  America  in  the  Making.  Yale  University  Press,  New 
Haven,  Connecticut. 

1913.  Letters  to  Unknown  Friends.  Doubleday,  Page  &  Com- 
pany, Garden  City,  New  York. 


REMINISCENCES 

CHAPTER  I 

I   INTRODUCE   MYSELF   TO   MY   READERS 

THESE  papers  are  reminiscences,  not  history. 
They  lay  no  claim  to  accuracy.  I  have  never  kept 
a  diary  or  journal.  I  have  always  been  more  in- 
terested in  what  is  going  to  happen  to-morrow  than  in 
what  happened  yesterday.  I  have  stood  in  the  bow  fore- 
casting the  course,  not  in  the  stern  watching  the  log. 
The  reader  will  find  few  dates  and  many  inaccuracies  in 
these  papers.  They  are  simply  a  record  of  the  impres- 
sions left  on  the  mind  of  a  man  who  has  passed  the  three- 
score-years-and-ten  as  he  endeavors  to  recall  some  of 
the  personages  and  incidents  of  a  somewhat  busy  but 
not  adventurous  life. 

I  am  informed  and  believe  that  I  was  born  in  Boston, 
Massachusetts,  on  the  eighteenth  day  of  December, 
1835,  He  who  is  born  in  Boston  never  gets  over  it. 
Although  I  was  born  in  Roxbury  (then  a  distinct  town, 
now  a  part  of  Boston),  and  although  I  was  removed 
from  Boston  to  Maine  before  I  was  three  years  old  and 
have  never  returned  to  that  city  since  except  on  occa- 
sional but  frequent  visits,  and  to  get  my  bride  twenty- 
two  years  later,  Boston  is  still  to  me  a  kind  of  Puritan 
Mecca.  There  is  no  city  quite  like  it;  no  river  like  the 
Charles;  no  park  like  the  Boston  Common;  no  lake  like 


2  REMINISCENCES 

the  frog  pond;  no  Capitol  like  the  Boston  State  House; 
no  residential  street  like  Commonwealth  Avenue;  no 
library  quite  equal  to  the  old  Athenaeum;  no  public 
meeting-place  comparable  to  Faneuil  Hall. 

Why  my  father  gave  up  his  prosperous  school  (of 
which  more  hereafter)  and  removed  to  Maine  I  do  not 
know.  I  suspect  his  health  had  something  to  do  with  the 
change.  If  so,  the  five  or  six  years  which  he  spent  writ- 
ing his  books  in  the  morning  and  working  like  a  day 
laborer  on  his  grounds  in  the  afternoon  achieved  his 
purpose.  His  wife's  early  letters  contain  many  a  refer- 
ence to  his  unsatisfactory  health  conditions.  As  I  knew 
my  father,  he  was  a  hale  and  hearty  man  and  always  a 
vigorous  worker. 

It  was  quite  characteristic  of  him  to  build  his 
house  on  a  piece  of  ground  which  few  men  would  have 
taken  as  a  gift.  It  was  ten  acres  or  so  in  extent,  lying 
opposite  his  father's  residence,  at  the  foot  of  the  hill 
leading  up  to  Farmington  village,  forty  miles  north 
of  Augusta,  the  capital  of  the  State  of  Maine.  A  big 
sand  hill,  a  spur  from  the  plateau  on  which  the  village 
was  built,  lay  along  the  edge  of  this  lot,  with  a  break 
in  it  just  large  enough  to  furnish  a  level  bit  of  ground 
for  a  house.  A  sluggish  brook  flowing  through  an  oozy 
swamp  lay  back  of  this  house  plot,  and  the  plateau 
lay  beyond.  My  father  put  up  a  sign  giving  permission 
to  any  one  to  come  in  and  get  sand  for  building  and 
other  purposes,  and,  as  this  sand  was  of  a  fine  quality, 
a  continual  procession  of  carts  came  and  went,  wid- 
ening without  cost  to  my  father  the  too  contracted 
ground  about  the  house.  The  sandy  knob  which  was 
left  on  one  side  of  my  father's  house  he  partly  turfed, 
partly  sowed  with  grass  seed;  he  planted  trees;  he  made 
paths;  and  he  built  in  his  own  carpenter  shop  wooden 


I  INTRODUCE   MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS      3 

benches  to  serve  as  seats.  To  this  knob  he  gave  the 
title  of  Little  Blue,  naming  it  for  Old  Blue,  one  of  the 
higher  mountains  of  Maine,  twenty  miles  away.  He 
dug  out  the  soil  from  the  swamp,  and  it  furnished  him 
material  for  the  transformation  of  the  sand  knob  into 
a  turf-clad  and  tree-clad  hill  perhaps  fifty  feet  high.  He 
built  a  dam  and  bridges  and  turned  the  oozy  swamp 
into  a  pond  and  the  sluggish  brook  into  a  musically  run- 
ning stream.  The  place  became  known  throughout  the 
surrounding  country,  by  the  title  of  its  chief  attraction, 
as  "Little  Blue";  it  was  thrown  open  to  a  welcomed 
pubhc,  and  grew  to  be  a  kind  of  village  park,  a  favorite 
recreation  resort  for  the  young  folks,  especially  on  Sun- 
day evenings.  My  father  had  the  faith  of  a  natural 
democrat,  and  the  events  justified  that  faith.  No  names 
were  carved  upon  the  benches;  the  trees  and  shrubs 
were  left  uninjured;  and  there  were  neither  flowers  nor 
fruits  to  tempt  beyond  measure  the  cupidity  of  the 
visitors.  Here  at  Little  Blue  we  hved  —  my  father,  my 
mother,  and  my  two  elder  brothers,  and  later  a  younger 
brother  —  until  1843.  Then  my  mother  died;  the  home 
was  broken  up;  Little  Blue  was  either  rented  or  sold  to 
my  Uncle  Samuel,  who  occupied  it  as  a  boarding-school; 
and  my  father,  his  health  completely  established  by  his 
avocation  as  a  landscape  gardener,  went  to  New  York 
City  to  open,  with  his  three  brothers,  the  Abbott  School 
for  Girls.  It  is  at  this  time  that  my  recollections  begin. 
I  describe  them  here  as  they  pass  before  me,  with  no 
attempt  to  verify  them  and  Httle  attempt  to  classify 
them  in  chronological  order. 

My  father,  Jacob  Abbott,  has  his  city  home  in  Mor- 
ton Street,  in  that  part  of  the  present  city  then  known 
as  Greenwich  Village.  The  school  building  is  a  mile 
away,  on  the  corner  of  Houston  and  Mulberry  Streets. 


4  REMINISCENCES 

It  is  a  large  square  building.  Was  it  once  occupied  as  a 
Roman  Catholic  nunnery,  I  wonder?  Or  is  that  a  myth 
of  my  childhood  days?  There  is  a  large  yard,  something 
like  a  third  of  a  block  in  extent,  surrounded  by  a  high 
brick  wall.  This  yard  is  a  playground  for  the  girls. 
Here  is  erected  a  tall,  strong  pole  ten  or  twelve  feet 
high,  with  a  six-armed  wheel  upon  the  top,  like  this  * . 
A  rope  dangles  from  each  arm,  and  on  the  lower  end  of 
the  rope  is  a  handle.  The  girls,  half  a  dozen  at  a  time, 
seize  these  handles  and  go  flying  round  the  pole,  their 
feet  touching  the  ground  from  time  to  time  to  keep  the 
"run-about"  a-going.  It  was  a  primitive  attempt  at 
feminine  athletics,  at  a  time  when  it  was  thought  that 
to  be  pale  and  anaemic  was  to  be  interesting  —  for 
girls  —  and  to  be  athletic  was  distinctly  unfeminine. 
I  have  the  notion  that  this  simple  machine,  still  in  use 
in  school  playgrounds,  was  my  father's  invention, 
though  I  do  not  know.  He  was  born  to  be  an  inventor. 
He  did  much  of  his  writing,  and  I  do  much  of  mine,  on 
the  best  writing  tablet  I  have  ever  seen,  one  of  his  own 
construction,  and  unlike  any  other  known  to  me. 

The  scene  shifts.  I  have  been  very  sick  with  scarlet 
fever.  It  has  left  me  feeble,  deaf,  and  subject  to  severe 
earaches.  The  modern  method  of  treating  the  ear  is  un- 
known, and  the  only  relief  that  I  can  get  from  this  ex- 
cruciating pain  is  the  slight  alleviation  furnished  by 
cotton  dipped  in  laudanum  and  placed  in  the  ear.  There 
are  doubtless  more  severe  pains  than  the  earache,  but 
I  have  never  suffered  any  pain  comparable  with  it.  I 
recall  myself  at  night  in  my  father's  arms.  He  makes  a 
bargain  with  me.  He  will  tell  me  a  story  for  fifteen 
minutes,  then  I  am  to  lie  still  and  let  him  sleep  for  fif- 
teen minutes.  So  we  get  through  the  night  together. 
Was  this  often  or  only  once,  I  wonder?   Was  it  wholly 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS      5 

to  give  me  what  relief  he  could,  and  yet  go  on  with  his 
morrow's  work?  or  was  it  to  teach  me  to  bear  pain  with 
such  fortitude  as  I  could  summon,  for  the  sake  of  serv- 
ing another?  I  suspect  that  was  in  part  his  purpose, 
and  the  lesson  was  not  wholly  lost. 

Now  I  have  gone  back  to  Farmington  and  am  in  my 
Uncle  Samuel's  school  in  my  old  home.  My  hearing  is 
restored,  and  although  for  some  years  the  earaches  re- 
turn with  every  cold  or  careless  exposure,  the  deafness 
never  reappears.  Opposite  my  uncle's  school  is  my 
grandfather's  home.  I  see  myself  sometimes  in  the 
school,  sometimes  in  my  grandfather's  home.  From 
this  I  judge  that  sometimes  I  lived  at  my  grandfather's 
and  went  to  school  at  Little  Blue  as  a  day  pupil.  The 
family  consists  of  my  grandfather,  who  was  beloved  of 
my  boyhood;  my  grandmother,  an  invalid  who  I  fancy 
had  no  use  for  noisy  boys  who  forget  to  wipe  their  shoes 
when  they  come  into  the  house  and  to  shut  the  door 
when  they  pass  through  the  room;  and  two  aunts,  an 
**old  maid,"  Sallucia,  and  a  widow,  Clara.  It  is  current 
report  that  Sallucia  was  named  for  two  friends  of  her 
mother  —  Sally  and  Lucy.  Connected  with  my  Aunt 
Clara  is  one  of  those  tragedies  which  occasionally  make 
known  to  us  the  divine  splendor  of  a  character  that 
would  otherwise  remain  unknown.  How  long  before 
my  remembrance  this  tragedy  occurred  I  cannot  tell. 
I  remember  her  only  as  a  widow. 

Her  husband,  Mr.  Cutler,  had  been  settled  over  a 
Congregational  church  near  Bangor,  Maine;  was  in- 
vited to  preach  in  a  Presbyterian  church  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, I  surmise  as  a  "candidate,"  and  accepted  the 
invitation.  Presently  word  came  to  my  aunt  by  mail 
(the  telegraph  was  unknown)  that  her  husband  was 
seriously  ill.    She  instantly  started  on  her  journey  to 


6  REMINISCENCES 

Pennsylvania,  that  she  might  nurse  him.  Arriving  in 
New  York  in  the  morning,  she  went  to  the  Abbott 
School  to  get  her  breakfast  and  make  inquiries;  asked 
of  the  maid  at  the  door  for  Dr.  Abbott,  and  was  told  in 
reply  that  he  had  gone  to  Pennsylvania  to  attend  the 
funeral  of  his  brother-in-law.  Such  was  the  way  the 
news  of  her  husband's  death  was  given  to  her.  She 
presently  returned  to  her  father's  house  to  take  up  her 
broken  life,  resolved  that  her  sorrow  should  never  be- 
cloud other  lives.  And  it  never  did.  In  no  treatise  I 
have  ever  read  have  I  found  such  an  evidence  of  Chris- 
tianity as  was  furnished  by  the  sunny  hfe  and  sweet, 
joyous  service  of  my  Aunt  Clara,  a  benediction  and  an 
inspiration  to  my  own  boyhood,  and  a  benediction  and 
an  inspiration  to  my  children  when  she  came  to  make 
her  home  with  me  in  the  closing  years  of  her  luminous 
life.  The  cheerfulness  of  that  life  was  not  due  to  for- 
getfulness  of  the  sorrow  which  she  did  not  permit  to 
shadow  it.  At  eighty  years  of  age  she  still  kept  hanging 
on  the  wall  of  her  room,  bringing  it  with  her  from  Maine 
to  New  York,  a  little  woodcut  picture  of  the  town  in 
Pennsylvania  where  her  husband  died  —  a  town  which 
she  had  never  seen.  She  once  gave  expression  to  her  ex- 
perience in  a  phrase  which  will  be  full  of  meaning  to 
those  who  understand  it,  and  absolutely  meaningless  to 
those  who  do  not  —  "Joyful  sorrow." 

What  sort  of  man  is  my  grandfather?  A  Puritan; 
but  such  a  Puritan !  That  I  have  never  shared  the  pop- 
ular prejudice  of  our  time  against  the  Puritans  is  per- 
haps due  to  my  delightful  recollections  of  my  grand- 
father. An  authentic  story  of  that  time  may  serve  to 
show  that  my  veneration  of  him  was  shared  by  others. 
A  layman  who  had  never  seen  the  interior  of  either  a 
college  or  a  theological  seminary,  but  had  taken  to  lay 


o  S 

O     o 
o    ^ 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS      7 

preaching  in  schoolhouses  and  rural  churches,  wished 
for  ordination  in  order  that  he  might  administer  the 
Lord's  Supper  and  perform  the  marriage  ceremony. 
Coming  before  a  Congregational  Council  for  examina- 
tion as  to  his  fitness  to  preach,  he  was  asked:  "What  is 
your  conception  of  God?"  He  hesitated  a  moment, 
then  replied:  "I  conceive  that  he  is  some  such  person  as 
Squire  Abbott."  It  was  a  higher  conception  of  God 
than  I  as  a  boy  possessed.  I  revered  both  God  and  my 
grandfather;  but  I  was  very  much  afraid  of  God  and  I 
loved  my  grandfather. 

My  grandfather's  house,  opposite  Little  Blue,  is  a 
long,  low,  rambling  dwelhng  with  a  little  box  of  a  hall 
from  which  we  enter  the  parlor  on  the  left  and  the  sit- 
ting-room on  the  right.  We  have  to  pass  through  the 
sitting-room  to  get  to  the  dining-room,  through  the 
dining-room  to  get  to  the  kitchen,  through  the  kitchen 
to  get  to  the  woodshed,  through  the  woodshed  to  get  to 
the  carriage-house,  through  the  carriage-house,  I  be- 
lieve, to  get  to  the  barn,  though  my  recollections  of  the 
barn  are  curiously  indistinct.  Out  of  the  sitting-room 
goes  a  steep  and  narrow  stairway,  by  which  I  climb  to 
my  bedroom  under  the  roof.  Just  off  the  dining-room, 
and  connected  with  it  by  another  box  of  a  hall,  is  my 
grandfather's  office.  In  this  office  are  some  objects 
of  my  boyhood  reverence  —  an  old  engraved  portrait  of 
Abbot,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury;  an  old  coat  of 
arms  bearing  the  inscription,  "By  the  Name  of  Abbot" 
(this  was  an  early  spelling  of  the  name  with  one  t,  a 
spelling  followed  by  my  grandfather,  so  that  he  was 
Jacob  Abbot,  with  one  t,  while  my  father  was  Jacob 
Abbott,  with  two  f  s) ;  an  old  sword  worn  by  my  grand- 
mother's father  in  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  in  which 
he  was  a  captain  of  a  Colonial  company;  and  a  cane  pre- 


8  REMINISCENCES 

sented  to  my  grandfather,  I  believe,  by  one  of  the  farm 
hands  in  Weld,  bearing,  curiously  and  ingeniously 
carved,  the  inscription :  — 

"Happy  the  man  whose  wish  and  care 
A  few  paternal  acres  bound. 
Content  to  breathe  his  native  air 
On  his  own  ground. 
Whose  herds  with  milk,  whose  fields  with  bread. 

Whose  flocks  supply  him  with  attire, 
Whose  trees  in  summer  yield  him  shade, 
In  winter  fire." 

From  this  cane  my  father  later  derived  the  title  which 
he  gave  to  the  old  homestead  —  "Fewacres." 

My  ideas  of  my  grandfather's  business  are  very  vague. 
He  has,  I  believe,  something  to  do  with  buying  and  sell- 
ing timber  lands.  The  house  is  heated  by  open  fires  and 
stoves,  and  the  attic  bedrooms  are  not  heated  at  all. 
Hot-water  bottles  are  unknown.  There  is  a  warming- 
pan;  but  it  is  reserved  for  invalids.  Ugh!  how  cold  it  is 
going  upstairs  and  getting  between  the  cold  sheets  with 
the  thermometer  twenty  degrees  below  zero  outside! 
It  is  characteristic  of  my  grandfather  to  forbid  the 
children  —  my  brothers  are  with  me  there  at  times  — 
to  go  through  the  dining-room  when  the  servants,  man 
and  maid,  are  at  their  meals.  If  we  want  to  go  to  the 
kitchen  or  woodshed,  we  must  go  out  of  doors  —  a 
valuable  lesson  in  consideration  and  courtesy  to  serv- 
ants. Some  other  lessons  of  practical  wisdom  and 
counsel  condensed  by  him  into  aphorisms  have  been  in- 
valuable guides  to  conduct  in  my  after  life.  Three,  par- 
ticularly, I  recall :  — 

Keep  on  the  safe  side  of  certainty. 

When  you  do  not  know  what  to  do,  do  nothing. 

Let  people  have  a  good  time  their  own  way. 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS      9 

A  lasting  impression  is  also  left  on  my  mind  by  the 
big  pictorial  Bible  which  lay  on  the  sitting-room  table, 
in  which  is  a  picture  illustrating  the  text,  "  Why  beholdest 
thou  the  mote  which  is  in  thy  brother's  eye,  but  con- 
siderest  not  the  beam  which  is  in  thine  own  eye?"  Two 
men  are  portrayed  standing  face  to  face  with  a  beam 
protruding  from  the  eye  of  one  of  them.  To  the  early 
impression  produced  by  this  picture  I  attribute  in  part 
my  lifelong  hostility  to  literalism  in  the  interpretation 
of  the  Bible. 

There  is  no  running  water  in  the  house,  and  of  course 
there  are  no  bathrooms.  There  is  a  well  of  delicious 
spring  water  just  outside  the  kitchen,  and  water  for 
washing  is  caught  in  hogsheads  from  the  roof.  I  suppose 
these  must  have  been  breeding-places  for  mosquitoes, 
and  yet,  curiously  enough,  I  do  not  at  all  connect  mos- 
quitoes with  my  grandfather's  house.  There  are  no 
screens  in  the  windows.  On  Saturday  nights  we  boys 
take  our  baths  in  the  kitcnen,  in  the  movable  washtubs. 
How  the  old  folks  took  theirs  I  do  not  recall  that  I  ever 
knew.  They  had  their  warmed  bedrooms  downstairs, 
which  probably  served  their  purpose.  In  the  dining- 
room  chimney  is  a  big  brick  oven.  On  Saturday  night 
hot  coals  are  shoveled  into  this  oven,  and  then  the 
earthen  crock  of  beans  is  put  in  and  left  there  overnight. 
Here,  too,  is  the  brown  bread  baked  —  real  brown  bread, 
such  as  can  never,  apparently,  be  produced  outside  of 
New  England,  as  real  fried  chicken  cannot  be  produced 
outside  the  Southern  States. 

Now  I  am  at  Little  Blue  School  opposite  my  grand- 
father's. Whether  I  was  first  at  my  grandfather's  and 
then  moved  over  to  the  school,  or  was  first  at  the  school, 
then  moved  over  to  my  grandfather's,  I  have  no 
idea.    These  reminiscences  are  like  the  impressions  of 


10  REMINISCENCES 

a  dream,  and  succeed  each  other  without  coherence  or 
continuity. 

There  is  an  epidemic  of  animal  magnetism,  which  in 
our  day  would  be  called  hypnotism.  It  runs  its  brief 
course  and  then  disappears,  but  for  six  weeks  is  a  domi- 
nating fashion.  There  is  one  boy  who  is  peculiarly  sus- 
ceptible to  the  influence,  whatever  it  was,  or  is,  and 
another  boy  who  has  peculiar  power  as  an  "operator." 
Often  the  victim  gets  pathetically  angry  when  his  tor- 
mentor, apparently  without  previous  preparation,  tells 
him  what  he  must  do  and  what  he  must  not  do,  and  he 
is  powerless  to  resist.  There  is  a  young  man  from  the 
village  who  is  supposed  by  us  boys  to  be  a  past-master 
in  this  curious  art.  Always  desirous  of  investigating 
new  phenomena  and  having  a  share  in  new  experiences, 
I  apply  to  this  young  man  to  operate  on  me,  and  I  am 
quite  ready  to  submit  myself  to  his  influence  for  the  sake 
of  finding  out  what  it  is.  So  I  take  my  seat  and  obey 
his  directions,  while  he  makes  the  passes  which  are  sup- 
posed to  be  needful  to  put  me  to  sleep.  Then  he  places 
his  thumb  on  the  bridge  of  my  nose  and  tells  me  that  I 
cannot  open  my  eyes ;  this  I  instantly  proceed  to  do  and 
to  look  him  serenely  in  the  face.  He  turns  from  me  with 
the  contemptuous  remark  that  I  am  not  a  good  subject. 

I  never  have  been.  I  have  passed  through  some  ex- 
citing experiences  in  great  congregations  in  revival 
meetings,  and  in  great  crowds  that  were  not  congrega- 
tions and  not  remotely  resembhng  revival  meetings,  and 
I  have  heard  many  fervid  and  famous  orators;  but  I 
have  never  been  swept  off  my  feet  by  either  orator  or 
crowd;  I  have  never  lost  my  consciousness  of  self  or  my 
self-mastery.  I  wonder  why  it  is.  I  am  not  conscious  of 
being  either  especially  strong-willed  or  especially  self- 
possessed.    And,  so  far  from  having  peculiar  resisting 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS    11 

power,  I  always  wish  to  agree  with  my  fellow-men  if  I 
can  possibly  find  a  way  to  do  so  without  disagreeing 
with  myself. 

What  did  we  study  at  Little  Blue?  I  have  no  notion. 
I  suppose  we  must  have  studied  what  boys  study  now- 
adays —  grammar,  spelling,  writing,  history,  arithmetic. 
But  I  recall  nothing  of  it  at  all.  My  first  remembrance 
of  grammar  is  my  study  of  the  Latin  grammar  at  a  later 
date,  which  gave  me,  so  far  as  I  now  can  see,  whatever 
knowledge  I  possess  of  the  structure  of  language.  It  is 
perhaps  for  that  reason  that  I  regret  to  see  Latin  dropped 
out  of  any  curriculum.  For  the  English  language  is  a  com- 
posite, and  has  no  architectural  structure  such  as  char- 
acterizes the  Latin.  I  have  a  vague  remembrance  of 
declamation:  "Marco  Bozzaris,"  "The  Boy  Stood  on 
the  Burning  Deck,"  and  the  like;  and  of  one  poor  boy 
who  was  struck  with  stage  fright  and  never  got  beyond 
the  first  line  without  bursting  into  tears  and  retiring  in 
disgrace.  I  remember  thinking  even  then,  with  some  in- 
dignation, that  punishing  him  for  his  failure  was  a  very 
poor  way  to  cure  him  of  his  fright. 

Modern  games  were  either  absolutely  or  relatively 
unknown.  There  was  no  lawn  tennis;  and,  as  I  remember 
it,  neither  baseball  nor  football.  "Two  old  cat"  and 
"three  old  cat"  were  common,  but  I  judge  that  I  never 
made  a  success  at  any  game  of  ball,  since  the  sobriquet 
"butter  fingers"  was  given  to  me.  I  could  keep  in  or 
near  the  front  line  in  a  boyish  race;  and  I  had  some  suc- 
cess in  wrestling,  not  by  reason  of  any  muscular  strength, 
but  because  I  was  spry  and  slippery.  I  never  owned  a 
gun,  and  I  have  not  yet  quite  got  over  my  boyhood  feel- 
ing, probably  derived  from  my  guardians,  that  a  gun  is 
not  a  boy's  toy.  This  impression  is  confirmed  by  an  in- 
cident in  my  oldest  son's  life.    He  went,  at  the  age  of 


12  REMINISCENCES 

thirteen,  to  spend  the  summer  of  1872  with  my  father 
and  my  two  aunts,  Sallucia  and  Clara.  Before  he  went 
his  grandfather  sent  him  a  paper  which  he  was  to  sign, 
containing  certain  conditions  to  which  he  was  to  agree, 
in  order  to  be  admitted  to  "Fewacres  University.*' 
Among  these  conditions  was  the  following:  "He  is  not 
to  go  gunning  with  anybody,  since  Aunts  Sallucia  and 
Clara,  though  very  capable  persons  in  some  respects^  are 
not  properly  qualified  to  take  care  of  a  boy  with  a  charge 
of  shot  in  his  side  or  with  half  his  face  blown  away."  I 
never  learned  to  box  and  never  had  muscle  enough  to 
learn.  Later,  in  college,  I  took  some  fencing  lessons,  and 
have  always  regretted  that  they  were  unavoidably 
discontinued. 

Among  the  impressions  which  my  school  life  left  upon 
me  was  one,  insignificant  in  itself,  but  significant  in  its 
effect.  One  Sunday  afternoon,  as  we  boys  were  starting 
for  church,  in  putting  on  my  overcoat  I  threw  it  over 
my  head,  struck  a  vase  upon  the  mantelpiece  and 
dashed  it  to  the  floor,  shattering  it  into  a  hundred  pieces. 
The  disaster  which  I  had  caused  would  probably  have 
been  suflicient  of  itself  to  prevent  a  repetition  of  that 
particular  form  of  carelessness.  The  teacher,  who  would 
simply  have  rebuked  me  if  my  heedless  act  had  done  no 
damage,  sent  me  to  my  bed  to  reflect  for  the  afternoon 
and  the  night  upon  the  enormity  of  the  crime,  which 
was  enormous  only  because  of  the  disaster  which  fol- 
lowed it.  I  knew  then,  as  I  know  now,  that  I  was  pun- 
ished, not  for  what  I  did,  but  for  the  consequences  of 
what  I  did.  I  have  never  got  over  the  sense  of  the  in- 
justice of  that  act.  Perhaps  I  ought  to  be  grateful  to 
my  teacher,  though  I  am  not,  for  teaching  me  the  lesson 
and  preventing  me  in  after  life,  when  I  had  children  of 
my  own,  from  measuring  their  conduct  by  the  conse- 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS    13 

quences  which  flowed  from  it,  not  by  the  motives  which 
inspired  it. 

My  favorite  sport  from  my  earliest  recollections  was 
trout  fishing.  There  was  an  occasional  trout  in  my 
father's  brook.  Two  miles  across  the  hills  was  a  larger 
and  much  better  brook,  with  a  cascade,  at  the  foot  of 
which  was  a  pool  where  one  might  always  see  a  trout, 
though  not  always  catch  him.  But  the  joy  of  life  was 
Alder  Brook,  twelve  or  fifteen  miles  away.  To  drive 
over  the  hills  to  this  brook,  build  a  rude  camp,  sleep  on 
boughs,  cook  our  meals,  and  come  back  with  a  hundred 
brook  trout  apiece  was  an  experience  to  look  forward  to 
with  eagerness  and  back  upon  with  rejoicing  memory. 
But  this  was  later,  when,  with  my  brothers,  I  came  from 
college  to  Farmington  for  my  summer  vacation. 

We  made  our  own  fish-lines,  twisting  and  double- 
twisting  and  triple-twisting  the  silk,  ganged  on  the  hooks, 
bought  the  long  bamboo  poles  and  cut  them  up,  and  out 
of  them  made  our  own  jointed  fishing-rods.  We  always 
cleaned  our  fish  ourselves.  It  was  the  law  of  the  sport 
that  our  fun  should  not  make  work  for  others  which  we 
ourselves  could  do.  Whether  this  law  was  imposed  on 
us  by  my  wise  Aunt  Clara  or  was  self-imposed  I  do  not 
know.  I  am  sure,  whoever  suggested  it,  we  gladly  ac- 
cepted the  suggestion  and  made  it  our  own,  and  that  we 
enjoyed  our  sport  the  more  because  it  cost  but  little  to 
any  one  else.  The  fishing  was  not  with  flies  but  with 
worms  dug  from  the  garden,  or,  if  the  supply  of  worms 
ran  short,  with  grasshoppers.  This  recalls  one  of  the 
fishing  stories  with  which  we  were  accustomed  to  en- 
liven our  conversation  on  the  trip :  — 

John,  John,  where  're  you  going? 

Fishin'. 

What  you  got  in  your  mouth? 

Worms  for  bait. 


14  REMINISCENCES 

It  is  with  some  hesitation  that  I  turn  from  these 
reminiscences  of  my  childhood  life  to  recall  my  impres- 
sions of  my  childhood  personaHty.  A  man's  judgment  of 
himself  is  rarely  accurate;  still  less  so  his  judgment  of 
what  he  was  as  a  boy.  For  it  is  the  unusual  experiences 
that  remain  in  his  memory,  and  it  is  the  usual  experiences 
which  interpret  his  character. 

What  I  see,  as  I  look  back  through  the  more  than 
threescore  years  to  the  dim  mental  photograph  of  myself 
left  in  my  mind,  is  a  feeble  boy,  somewhat  under  the 
average  in  height,  very  much  under  the  average  in 
weight  and  strength,  fairly  good  in  swimming,  skating, 
climbing,  and  tramping,  but  quite  unable  to  hold  his 
own  in  the  rougher  sports  of  the  boys,  somewhat  soli- 
tary, somewhat  a  recluse,  and  naturally  timid.  And  yet 
I  could  not  have  been  quite  a  coward,  for  I  remember, 
even  now  with  a  curious  sense  of  pride,  that  when  a  big 
bully  of  a  boy  (probably  not  so  much  of  a  brute  as  I  now 
imagine  him  to  have  been)  hectored  me  beyond  endur- 
ance, I  challenged  him  to  a  fight,  and  we  retired  behind 
the  barn,  with  a  small  group  of  boys  as  onlookers,  and 
fought  a  fisticuff  duel.  Doubtless  I  got  much  the  worse 
of  our  encounter,  for  I  cannot  conceive  that  my  fist 
would  have  hurt  anything  much  bigger  than  a  house- 
fly, but  at  least  I  won  his  respect,  and  the  bullying 
stopped.  I  have  never  been  for  peace-at-any-price  as  a 
man,  and  I  was  not  as  a  boy. 

My  impression  of  my  feebleness  of  physique  is 
borne  out  by  some  of  my  mother's  letters,  which  in- 
dicate that  I  was  both  a  delicate  and  an  active  child 
from  the  cradle.  One  extract  from  a  letter  dated  April, 
1838,  when  I  was  two  years  and  a  half  old,  may  serve 
to  indicate  something  of  both  my  health  and  my 
temperament :  — 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS    15 

Our  little  Lyman  has  been  more  delicate  since  his  illness, 
subject  to  a  cough  which  occasions  care  and  anxiety,  mostly 
because  it  has  increased  his  former  difficulties.  The  Dr.  still 
encourages  us  to  look  for  an  entire  cure,  but  says  he  will  need 
all  a  mother's  watchfulness  for  two  years  or  more,  and  must 
not  be  allowed  all  the  liberty  he  desires  in  exercises,  such  as 
walking,  running,  etc.  He  is  such  an  active  child  that  it  is 
difficult  to  restrain  him,  but  he  seems  at  times,  from  his  suffer- 
ings, to  be  fully  conscious  that  he  cannot  do  all  he  wants. 

This  chapter  would  be  wholly  inadequate  without  a 
picture,  be  it  ever  so  fragmentary,  of  the  religious  in- 
fluences which  surrounded  me  in  my  childhood  and  their 
effect  upon  my  religious  character. 

Every  one  went  to  church  —  every  one  with  the  ex- 
ception of  two  or  three  families  whom  I  looked  upon 
with  a  kind  of  mysterious  awe,  as  I  might  have  looked 
upon  a  family  without  visible  means  of  support  and 
popularly  suspected  of  earning  a  livelihood  by  counter- 
feiting or  some  similar  lawless  practice.  The  church 
itself  was  an  old-fashioned  brick  Puritan  meeting-house, 
equally  free  from  architectural  ornament  without  and 
from  decoration  within.  The  pews  had  been  painted 
white;  for  some  reason  the  paint  had  not  dried,  and  the 
congregation,  to  protect  their  garments,  had  spread 
down  upon  the  seats  and  backs  of  the  pews  newspapers, 
generally  religious.  When  the  paint  at  length  dried  the 
newspapers  were  pulled  off,  leaving  the  impression  of 
their  type  reversed,  and  I  used  to  interest  myself  dur- 
ing the  long  sermon  in  trying  to  decipher  the  hiero- 
glyphic impressions.  There  was  neither  Sunday-School 
room  nor  prayer-meeting  room.  The  Sunday-School 
was  held  in  the  church,  and  the  parson  at  prayer-meet- 
ing took  a  seat  in  a  pew  about  the  center  of  the  building, 
put  a  board  across  the  back  of  the  pews  to  hold  his 
Bible  and  his  lamp,  and  sat,  except  when  speaking,  with 


16  REMINISCENCES 

his  back  to  the  congregation.  A  great  wood  stove  at  the 
rear,  with  a  smoke-pipe  extending  the  whole  length  of 
the  room  to  the  flue  in  front,  furnished  the  heat  —  none 
too  much  of  it  on  cold  winter  days.  Plain  and  even 
homely  as  was  this  meeting-house,  associations  have 
given  to  it  a  sacredness  in  my  eyes  which  neither  Gothic 
arch  nor  pictured  window  could  have  given  to  it.  My 
grandfather  was  largely  instrumental  in  constructing  it. 
In  its  pulpit  each  of  his  five  sons  preached  on  occasions. 
One  of  them  acted  as  its  pastor  for  a  year  or  more.  A 
grandson  and  a  great-grandson  of  his  were  here  bap- 
tized. My  earliest  recollections  of  public  worship  and  of 
Sunday-School  teaching  are  associated  with  it.  We  four 
brothers  have  each  at  times  played  the  organ  in  connec- 
tion with  its  service  of  sacred  song.  My  brother  Edward 
and  myself  were  both  ordained  to  the  Gospel  ministry 
within  its  walls,  and  in  its  pulpit  preached  some  of  our 
first  sermons.  The  church  still  exists,  a  flourishing  or- 
ganization, but  the  meeting-house  was  destroyed  by 
fire  in  1886,  and  its  place  has  been  taken  by  a  more 
modern  structure. 

The  minister  in  my  boyhood  was  understood  by  me  — 
where  I  got  the  information  I  do  not  know  —  to  have  a 
salary  of  three  hundred  dollars  a  year,  on  which,  having 
no  children,  he  Hved  comfortably  and  out  of  it  saved 
something  to  leave  behind  him  when  he  died.  Minis- 
terial changes  were  infrequent.  He  came  to  Farmington 
directly  from  the  theological  seminary,  and  he  remained 
there  throughout  his  life.  He  had  a  face  which  was  capa- 
ble of  great  expressiveness,  and  would  have  made  his 
fortune  as  a  comic  actor.  When  during  my  college  days 
my  brothers  and  I  jointly  wrote  "Conecut  Corners:  A 
Novel  of  New  England  Life,"  we  put  his  face  in  the 
book,  giving  it  to  Deacon  Fickson.   But  Parson  Rogers 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS    17 

had  none  of  the  qualities  of  Deacon  Fickson  except  the 
face;  for  he  was  as  good  as  he  was  homely  —  which  is 
saying  a  great  deal.  Two  other  characters  in  the  prayer- 
meeting  I  particularly  remember  —  one  who  always  on 
Sunday  wore  knee-breeches,  and  who  was  as  hostile  to 
the  use  of  any  hymns  in  church  but  those  of  Isaac  Watts 
as  would  be  an  old  Scotch  Covenanter  to  anything  but 
the  Psalms  of  David;  the  other,  good  Deacon  Hunter, 
who  always  addressed  the  Deity  in  his  prayers  either  as 
"Kind  Parent"  or  "Indulgent  Parent." 

Parson  Rogers's  sermons  I  do  not  remember,  from 
which  I  conclude  that  I  did  not  listen  to  them.  But  his 
long  prayer  was  always  interesting.  For  in  it  he  told  the 
congregation,  through  his  address  to  the  Almighty,  the 
village  news  with  great  particularity.  That  prayer 
served  all  the  purposes  of  a  local  newspaper.  From  it  we 
learned  of  those  who  during  the  preceding  week  had 
been  married,  who  were  sick,  who  had  died,  who  had 
gone  a  journey,  who  had  gone  to  college  or  come  back 
from  college.  All  were  remembered  before  "the  throne 
of  grace."  And  as  no  names  were  mentioned,  the  in- 
terest was  enhanced  by  the  opportunity  afforded  us  for 
guessing.  The  prayer  after  the  sermon  made  up  in  its 
brevity  for  the  length  of  the  prayer  before,  and  always 
ended  with  the  same  refrain,  in  which  the  words  were 
run  together  in  the  utterance  as  they  are  here  run  to- 
gether in  the  type  —  "  Andbringsustogetherintheaf ter- 
partofthedaybetterfittedforthyservicethanweeveryethave 
been  Amen." 

It  was  before  the  days  of  church  organs  —  at  least  of 
reed  organs  —  in  rural  communities.  The  music  was 
furnished  by  a  volunteer  choir  and  an  orchestra  —  a 
'cello,  called  by  us  a  bass-viol,  two  violins,  and  a  flute. 
When  the  hymn  was  sung  we  rose,  turned  around  and 


18  REMINISCENCES 

faced  the  choir,  with  our  backs  to  the  pulpit.  After  serv- 
ice the  congregation  stopped,  in  summer  weather,  in 
the  churchyard  for  a  chat;  the  farmers  discussing  the 
crops,  the  women,  I  suppose,  the  village  news  —  it  was 
their  one  social  interchange  of  the  week — while  we  chil- 
dren remained  within  for  Sunday-School.  I  wonder  if  I 
ever  learned  anything  at  that  Sunday-School.  I  am  by 
no  means  sure,  and  yet  I  remember  my  teacher  with 
mingled  feelings  of  reverence  and  affection.  The  school 
over,  we  hurried  home  to  a  cold  luncheon  and  back  again 
to  a  second  service,  which  must  be  finished  in  time  to  let 
the  men  in  the  congregation  get  home  to  milk  the  cows. 
After  service,  when  I  lived  at  my  grandfather's,  my  two 
brothers  and  I  walked  up  into  the  pasture  opposite  the 
house,  a  walk  which  is  one  of  the  pleasantest  of  my 
childhood  recollections,  capped,  however,  by  one  other  — 
our  Sunday  evenings,  when  we  gathered  about  my 
mother's  organ  in  the  sitting-room  for  a  Sunday  even- 
ing singing,  each  member  of  the  group  selecting  his 
hymn  in  turn,  our  service  generally  ending  with  the 
hymn 

"Thus  far  the  Lord  has  led  me  on, 
Thus  far  his  power  prolongs  my  days." 

I  do  not  suppose  that  my  grandfather  could  have 
been  induced  to  use  a  prayer-book  at  family  prayers. 
But  long  custom  had  produced  a  prayer  so  uniform  that 
his  daughter  after  his  death  was  able  to  write  out  part 
of  it  from  memory,  and  I  have  recently  found  it  in  some 
old  family  records.  "Father's  prayer,"  she  writes,  "was 
repeated  daily  at  family  worship.  There  was  some  slight 
variation  to  distinguish  morning  from  evening  and  Sab- 
bath from  a  week  day."  The  introductory  sentence  may 
suffice  here  to  suggest  the  character  of  the  whole:  — 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS    19 

O  Thou  Great  Creator,  eternal,  original  Author  of  all  real 
blessings.  Thou  great  First  Cause  and  Last  End  of  all  things 

—  we.  Thy  unworthy  servants,  come  into  Thy  presence  this 
morning,  clothed  with  humility,  with  reverence  and  godly  fear 

—  believing  that  Thou  art  a  rewarder  of  all  such  as  diligently 
seek  Thee,  and  we  humbly  ask  the  same  blessings  for  others 
which  we  diligently  seek  for  ourselves. 

If  this  prayer  indicates  in  the  petitioner  reverence  and 
"godly  fear,"  his  farewell  address  to  the  Sunday-School, 
after  five  years  and  four  months'  service  as  assistant 
superintendent  and  as  superintendent,  no  less  indicates 
his  practical  piety.  The  following  sentence  from  this  ad- 
dress might  profitably  be  printed  on  a  card  and  hung 
over  the  superintendent's  desk  in  every  Sunday-School 
room  and  impressed  on  every  teacher:  "All  our 
knowledge  of  the  Scriptures  must  be  in  order  to  prac- 
tice —  for  this  is  the  end  of  all  divine  revelation  —  that 
we  may  do  all  the  work  of  God's  law."  It  has  been  in- 
teresting to  me  to  discover,  and  it  is  a  happiness  to  me 
here  to  acknowledge,  my  indebtedness  in  part  to  my 
Puritan  grandfather  for  my  lifelong  conviction  that 
theoretical  theology  is  valuable  only  as  it  bears  on  the 
practical  conduct  of  life. 

Decidedly  my  impression  of  the  Puritan  Sabbath  is 
a  pleasant  one.  But  this  is  partly  perhaps  because  I 
early  formed,  quite  unconsciously,  the  habit  of  both  re- 
membering and  anticipating  the  pleasant  things.  Pro- 
fessor Bergson  has  shown  us  that  there  is  no  present 
time;  what  we  call  the  present  is  only  a  threshold  across 
which  we  pass  from  the  past  to  the  future.  It  is  in  that 
past  and  that  future  that  we  really  live.  And  he  who 
will  habitually  recall  the  pleasant  experiences  and  an- 
ticipate pleasant  experiences  can  do  much  to  make  his 
life  a  pleasant  one,  whatever  the  present  may  seem  to 
him  to  be.    If  my  caustic  friend  replies  to  this  sugges- 


20  REMINISCENCES 

tion  that  he  does  not  wish  to  live  in  a  fool's  paradise, 
I  rejoin  that  I  would  rather  live  in  a  fool's  paradise  than 
in  a  fool's  purgatory. 

My  religious  experience  was  not,  however,  by  any 
means  always  pleasant.  I  suppose  all  children  create  a 
theology  of  their  own.  My  theology,  as  I  taught  it  to 
myself,  was  something  like  this :  — 

"You  are  a  sinner,  under  divine  condemnation.  Your 
sins  have  separated  you  from  God.  They  have  also 
separated  you  from  the  men  and  women  you  most  revere 
and  admire :  from  Deacon  Hunter,  and  your  Aunt  Clara, 
and  your  grandfather,  and  your  father  in  New  York, 
and  your  mother  in  heaven.  To  be  like  them  you  must 
have  a  conviction  of  sin;  you  must  first  feel  very  sorry 
because  you  are  a  sinner,  then  very  glad  because  you 
have  been  forgiven;  and  then  you  can  begin  to  be  a 
Christian." 

I  do  not  know  where  I  got  this  theology.  Certainly 
not  from  my  father,  for  the  "Young  Christian,"  which 
he  had  written  before  I  was  born,  was  the  first  book  to 
lead  me  out  of  this  tangle.  Certainly  not  from  my  Aunt 
Clara  or  my  grandfather;  if  I  had  gone  to  either  of  them, 
they  would  have  set  me  right.  But  I  was  too  shy;  and 
as  to  going  to  Parson  Rogers,  he  was  too  far  removed 
from  me  to  be  a  father  confessor.  So  I  worked  at  the 
problem  by  myself.  In  the  evening  twilight,  when  the 
dusk  was  gathering  and  the  melancholy  frogs  were  croak- 
ing, I  used  to  go  to  my  bedroom  and  try  to  think  of  all 
the  wicked  things  I  had  done  during  the  day,  and,  as 
that  was  not  enough,  of  my  mother  in  heaven  and  my 
father  in  New  York,  and  of  myself,  a  lonely,  homeless, 
outcast  boy,  in  the  vain  hope  that  conviction  of  sin 
would  come.  But  it  never  came.  The  truth  is,  I  was  a 
fairly  conscientious  little  boy;  I  had  not  committed  any 


I  INTRODUCE  MYSELF  TO  MY  READERS    21 

great  sins;  I  was  very  far  from  being  an  outcast;  and, 
though  I  thought  I  ought  to  beheve  that  every  one  dis- 
approved me,  I  knew  they  didn't,  and  I  was  too  honest 
with  myself  to  make  beheve.  I  could  never  get  any  fur- 
ther than  to  be  sorry  because  I  was  not  sorry.  I  had  no 
pack  on  my  back  to  sink  in  the  Slough  of  Despond,  and 
it  never  occurred  to  me  that  I  could  get  to  the  Wicket 
Gate  without  it.  It  was  all  so  curiously  childish  that  to 
me  it  now  has  a  certain  humorous  side.  But  it  was 
tragedy  then.  Nor  did  I  get  that  more  natural  concep- 
tion of  religion  which  I  have  ever  since  been  trying  to 
give  my  fellow-men  till  ten  years  or  so  later.  To  this 
day,  when  I  hear  teachers  insisting  upon  the  necessity 
of  supernatural  religion,  they  recall  to  me  this  boyhood 
experience,  and  I  always  want  to  put  in  a  protest  in 
favor  of  a  religion  that  is  wholly  natural. 

And  yet  religion  was  not  always  a  dread  to  me.  For 
one  of  my  great  ambitions  was  to  be  a  minister,  and  one 
of  my  favorite  childish  vocations  was  preaching.  I  see 
myself  now,  a  pale-faced,  anaemic,  slim  chap  of  ten  or 
eleven,  with  all  the  appearance  but  none  of  the  habits 
of  an  ascetic,  preaching  to  a  congregation  of  empty 
chairs,  with  my  brothers  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  sit- 
ting-room, practicing  as  a  choir.  For  the  only  condition 
on  which  they  would  attend  the  service  was  that  they 
might  practice  while  I  preached,  and  to  that  compromise 
I  had  to  consent.  This  was  quite  orthodox.  For  I  have 
since  learned  that  choirs  often  pay  no  more  attention  to 
the  preaching  than  my  brothers  paid  to  mine,  and 
preachers  no  more  attention  to  the  music  than  I  paid  to 
theirs.  But  my  religion  was  sometimes  more  serious. 
When,  a  little  later,  I  went  to  the  school  of  another  uncle 
in  Connecticut,  my  best  friend  there  was  an  Episcopa- 
lian.   Together  we  arranged  "family  prayers"  in  our 


22  REMINISCENCES 

bedroom,  our  two  other  mates  joining  with  us.  Some- 
times we  read  prayers  from  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer, 
sometimes  I  offered  an  extempore  prayer.  This  was 
about  the  time  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
was  born,  but  some  years  before  it  had  appeared  on  this 
side  of  the  water. 

In  1846  my  eldest  brother,  Benjamin  Vaughan,  en- 
tered the  New  York  University;  a  year  later  he  was  fol- 
lowed by  my  second  brother,  Austin,  exactly  four 
years  my  senior,  for  we  were  bom  on  the  same  day  four 
years  apart.  About  the  same  time  I  was  transferred 
from  my  Uncle  Samuel's  school  in  Farmington  to  my 
Uncle  Charles's  school  in  Norwich,  Connecticut,  where 
my  preparation  for  college  was  completed.  My  grand- 
father and  grandmother  had  both  died,  and  I  imagine 
my  father  wished  me  nearer  him  at  his  city  home.  But 
the  home  of  my  aunts  at  Farmington  continued  to  be  my 
home  during  my  vacations  until  I  was  married  in  1857. 


CHAPTER  11 

NEW   YORK    CITY    IN    1850 

RETURNING  from  his  first  trip  to  Europe,  my 
father  came  home  in  1843  to  find  his  wife  on  her 
death-bed  and  to  follow  to  her  grave  the  mother 
and  her  newborn  babe,  laid  in  the  same  casket.  Before 
he  had  left  for  Europe  in  the  spring  he  had  acceded  to 
the  urgency  of  a  younger  brother,  Gorham,  to  join  him 
in  establishing  in  New  York  City  a  school  for  the  higher 
education  of  girls.  The  death  of  my  mother  made  con- 
tinuing the  literary  work  in  the  morning  and  the  land- 
scape gardening  in  the  afternoon  at  Little  Blue  impossi- 
ble to  my  father.  He  packed  up  the  few  things  he  wished 
to  take  with  him  to  the  city,  sent  many  of  my  mother's 
things,  which  he  could  neither  keep  nor  sell,  to  her  only 
sister,  married  and  living  at  Worcester,  Massachusetts, 
left  my  youngest  brother  Edward  with  his  Aunt  Sallucia, 
living  with  her  father  opposite  Little  Blue,  in  Farming- 
ton,  Maine,  and,  taking  with  him  his  other  three  boys, 
Benjamin  Vaughan,  Austin,  and  myself,  started  for  New 
York. 

At  the  time  he  wrote  to  his  sister,  "I  think  they  will 
not  soon  forget  their  mother."  He  was  right.  They 
never  did.  And  in  a  pathetic  self-revelation,  the  more 
pathetic  to  me  as  I  read  it  now  because  of  his  habitual 
reserve,  he  wrote:  — 

For  myself,  I  can  only  keep  away  from  my  mind  the  terrible 
realization  of  that  last  fatal  night,  the  days  of  distress  and 


24  REMINISCENCES 

anguish  unspeakable  which  followed  —  and  the  gloomiest 
thoughts  and  anticipations  of  the  future  —  by  means  of  in- 
cessant occupation,  busying  continually  with  endless  details 
which  under  other  circumstances  would  be  a  wearisome 
burden. 

His  city  home  was  at  first  in  Morton  Street  in  old 
Greenwich.  My  earliest  recollection  of  the  school  is  on 
the  corner  of  Houston  and  Mulberry  Streets.  Two  other 
brothers,  John  S.  C.  and  Charles  E.,  joined  Jacob  and 
Gorham  in  the  new  enterprise,  which  was  a  surprising 
success  from  the  very  beginning  —  one  of  the  earlier  of 
the  movements  for  woman's  better  education  which 
later  led  up  to  the  woman's  colleges  and  woman's  ad- 
mission to  the  great  universities. 

When  I  came  to  New  York  in  1849  to  enter  the  New 
York  University,  the  school  had  made  its  last  removal. 
My  Uncle  Charles  had  left  it  two  or  three  years  before 
and  had  opened  a  school  for  boys  in  Norwich,  Connecti- 
cut, where  I  had  fitted  for  college.  My  Uncle  Gorham 
had  withdrawn  and  taken  forty  of  the  older  pupils  with 
him,  with  his  brother's  entire  approbation,  and  had  es- 
tablished a  separate  school  which  became  Spingler  In- 
stitute. The  Abbott  School  had  a  double  habitation,  my 
Uncle  John  keeping  the  boarding  pupils  in  his  home  in 
Colonnade  Row,  Lafayette  Place,  my  father  living  in  a 
house  which  he  had  bought  in  Greene  Street  near  Eighth 
Street,  which  served  as  the  schoolhouse  both  for  the  day 
and  boarding  pupils.  Some  important  changes  in  the 
city  government  had  also  taken  place.  In  one  of  those 
spasms  of  reform  which  periodically  attack  New  York 
City  Mr.  James  Harper  had  been  elected  Mayor,  and 
in  two  years  of  administration  (1844-46)  had  effected 
some  radical  reforms,  in  spite  of  the  hostile  influence 
which  such  reforms  have  always  had  to  combat  and 


HARRIET  VAUGHAN 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN   1850  25 

which  succeeded  in  defeating  his  reelection  in  1846, 
though  the  inevitable  relapse  did  not  come  until  the 
election  as  Mayor  of  Fernando  Wood  in  1854.  During 
this  period,  1849-54, 1  was  living  a  quasi-bohemian  life 
in  New  York  City. 

The  best  residential  portion  of  the  city  extended  from 
Bleecker  to  Fourteenth  Street.  WTien  my  Uncle  Gor- 
ham  withdrew  from  the  Abbott  School  and  opened  the 
Spingler  Institute  in  Union  Square  in  1848,  he  was  so 
far  uptown  that  croakers  prophesied  that  the  school 
could  not  possibly  succeed.  The  Brick  Church  was  still 
on  Park  Row  opposite  the  City  Hall  Park,  Dr.  Cuyler 
was  preaching  in  the  section  east  of  Chatham  Square 
where  the  fine  residences  formerly  had  been,  the  Harlem 
River  was  the  northern  boundary  of  the  political  city, 
but  Harlem  was  for  all  social  and  most  business  purposes 
a  separate  town,  and  Yorkville  on  the  east  and  Bloom- 
ingdale  on  the  west  were  still  regarded  as  separate  com- 
munities. The  present  Central  Park  was  worse  than  a 
wilderness,  peopled  by  tribes  of  squatters  and  overrun 
with  goats.  The  Elysian  Fields  in  Hoboken  served  the 
purpose  of  a  great  recreation  ground  for  the  common 
people.  P.  T.  Barnum  got  possession  of  a  part  of  these 
fields  for  a  day,  arranged  for  a  buffalo  hunt  in  the  style 
of  a  Wild  West  Show,  chartered  the  ferryboat  to  Ho- 
boken, and  then  announced  a  free  show,  with  the  result 
that  the  crowded  ferries  at  five  or  ten  cents  ferriage 
yielded  him  a  handsome  profit.  And  although  the  show 
simply  consisted  in  driving  some  rather  tame  buffaloes 
around  a  ten-acre  plot,  everybody  was  satisfied  —  for  the 
show  was  free,  and  who  could  grumble  at  a  free  show.^ 

The  New  York  and  New  Haven  main  railway  station 
was  where  Madison  Square  Garden  now  stands;  but 
there  was  a  downtown  station  in  Canal  Street  just  off 


26  REMINISCENCES 

Broadway,  and  four  horses  pulled  the  passenger  cars 
uptown  to  the  great  station,  where  the  locomotive  was 
attached  to  the  train.  In  going  to  Washington  we 
changed  cars  at  Philadelphia,  and  were  carried  across 
the  city  in  horse  cars;  were  ferried  across  the  Delaware 
River,  where  now  we  cross  on  abridge;  and  were  drawn, 
without  change  of  cars,  through  the  streets  of  Baltimore, 
a  guard  standing  on  the  front  platform  and  blowing  a 
horn  to  warn  vehicles  that  might  be  in  the  way.  Within 
New  York  City  transportation  was  afforded  by  lumber- 
ing stage-coaches,  one  line  running  from  Greenwich  Vil- 
lage through  Bleecker  Street  to  Fulton  Ferry,  other  lines 
running  from  further  uptown  to  the  South  Ferry,  and 
later  one  line  to  Wall  Street  Ferry.  In  winter  there  was 
no  attempt  to  remove  the  snow.  No,  indeed!  Great 
sleighs  were  substituted  for  the  omnibuses;  they  were 
drawn  by  six  or  eight  and  occasionally  by  sixteen  horses. 
It  was  one  of  the  joyous  larks  of  a  winter's  night  to  take 
a  sleigh  ride  to  the  accompaniment  of  snowballs  from 
meeting  or  following  sleighs.  I  wonder  how  the  con- 
ductor succeeded  in  collecting  his  fares. 

The  theaters,  I  should  guess,  were  not  very  different 
in  quality  of  attraction  from  those  of  to-day.  But  I  have 
never  been  a  great  theater-goer,  and  therefore  am  no 
judge.  We  had  Burton  in  Chambers  Street  and  the 
elder  Wallack  in  lower  Broadway,  and  later  the  younger 
Wallack,  great  in  my  boyish  eyes  in  melodrama,  and 
Laura  Keene,  who  may  not  have  been  a  great  but  was  a 
very  charming  actress  in  comedy;  Macready  and  Edwin 
Forrest  in  tragedy,  with  a  rivalry  between  their  respec- 
tive adherents  ending  in  one  tragic  mob ;  and  later  Edwin 
Booth,  the  most  perfectly  artistic  actor  I  have  ever  seen. 
But  the  delight  of  my  life  was  the  Ravel  family  —  pan- 
tomimists  and  acrobats,  whose  performances  at  Niblo's 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN   1850  27 

Garden,  so  called,  were  my  admiration  then,  and  I  rather 
think  would  be  my  admiration  now.  The  plot  of  the 
pantomime  was  always  the  same  —  a  romantic  lover,  a 
beautiful  maiden,  an  irate  father,  and  a  wealthy  suitor; 
the  jBrst  two  eloping,  the  second  two  in  close  pursuit. 
The  lover  had  a  magic  ring  or  a  magic  feather  or  a  magic 
whistle,  and  he  turned  the  ring,  or  waved  the  feather,  or 
blew  the  whistle,  whereupon  a  transformation  always 
followed,  enchanting  to  the  audience  and  distracting  to 
the  irate  father  and  his  confederate.  The  lover  and  the 
maiden  were  dancing  in  a  brilliant  ballroom;  the  irate 
father  appeared;  the  magic  whistle  was  blown;  and  in- 
stantly the  brilliantly  dressed  dancers  turned  to  skele- 
tons, the  marble  colonnades  to  tombstones,  and  the  irate 
father  and  his  companion  fled  in  terror.  The  lover  was 
captured  and  set  up  against  a  wall;  soldiers  filed  in  and 
shot  him;  he  fell  upon  the  floor  in  three  or  four  pieces,  a 
leg  rolled  off  in  one  direction,  an  arm  in  another,  the 
head  in  a  third;  the  irate  father  marched  off  in  triumph; 
friends  of  the  lover  came  in,  picked  up  the  pieces,  stood 
them  up  against  the  wall;  one  of  the  friends  blew  a  blast 
on  the  magic  whistle,  and  the  recovered  lover  stepped 
down  from  the  wall  and  executed  a  gay  pirouette  before 
our  eyes.  I  wonder  whether  I  am  still  boy  enough  to 
enjoy  it  all  now,  or  whether  I  should  see  through  the 
illusion  and  wonder  at  my  wonder. 

For  the  orthodox,  who  thought  it  wrong  to  go  to  the 
theater,  there  were  Barnum's  Museum  and  Christy's 
Minstrels  and  Perham's  Panorama.  Barnum's  Museum 
was  situated  at  the  corner  of  Ann  Street  and  Broadway, 
opposite  the  old  Astor  House,  which  they  are  beginning 
to  demolish  as  I  am  writing  these  lines.  A  band  of  half 
a  dozen  players  upon  brass  instruments  occupied  a  bal- 
cony and  competed  more  or  less  successfully  with  the 


28  REMINISCENCES 

noise  of  the  street.    Within  were  all  manner  of  curiosi- 
ties, real  and  fictitious,  and  a  little  theater  where  went 
on  some  sort  of  a  performance  twice  a  day.    It  was 
labeled  "Lecture  Room,"  and  the  legend  was  current  in 
college  that  a  very  orthodox  and  also  a  very  simple- 
minded  member  of  my  brother's  class,  after  inspecting 
the  curiosities,  went  into  this  lecture  room,  expecting  a 
prayer-meeting,  and  fled  in  horror  from  the  spot  when 
the  curtain  rose  and  disclosed  some  dancers  or  male  and 
female  acrobats,  I  forget  which.    There  was  for  a  little 
while  a  passion  for  panoramas,  a  kind  of  moving  picture 
show  quite  unlike  the  modern  "movies."   John  Banvard 
carried  this  form  of  exhibition  to  its  climax  in  his  pano- 
rama of  the  Mississippi,  which  he  had  painted  himself 
traveling  the  Mississippi  in  a  skiff  for  that  purpose.   The 
panorama  is  said  to  have  been  three  miles  long.   We  sat 
in  our  seats  as  the  picture  was  unrolled  before  us  for  an 
hour  and  a  half  or  more,  and  easily  imagined  ourselves 
on  the  deck  of  a  Mississippi  steamer  watching  the  shore 
as  we  sailed  down  the  river.    Christy's  Minstrels  was  a 
favorite  recreation  of  my  father's.    I  am  inclined  to 
think  their  jokes  and  conundrums  were  rather  a  bore  to 
him;  but  they  had  good  voices,  and  their  music,  though 
not  of  the  highest  kind,  was,  of  its  kind,  the  best.   There 
was  no   Philharmonic  or   Symphony   Society  in  those 
days,  though  I  think  the  Oratorio  Society  existed,  and 
there  must  have  been  an  orchestra  to  accompany  it. 
But  Barnum,  who  was  a  great  benefactor  to  his  country 
as  well  as  a  great  showman,  brought  Jenny  Lind  to 
America,  and  so  set  the  fashion  of  importing  famous 
singers  to  America,  which  later  led  on  to  the  Metropoli- 
tan Opera. 

Jenny  Lind's  advent  created  an  unparalleled  furor  of 
excitement.    We  were  younger  in  those  days  and  more 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN   1850  29 

excitable  than  we  are  now,  and  Barnum  had  a  genius  for 
creating  and  taking  advantage  of  excitement.  He  was  a 
born  advertiser.  The  tickets  to  the  first  Jenny  Lind  con- 
cert were  sold  at  auction.  An  enterprising  hatter  paid 
several  hundred  dollars  for  the  first  ticket  —  and  the 
National  advertisement  which  the  purchase  gave  to  him. 
I  had  a  chance,  which  I  seized  with  avidity,  to  act  as 
escort  to  a  lady  who  sang  in  the  great  chorus  on  the  one 
occasion  in  which  Jenny  Lind  sang  in  the  oratorio  of  the 
"Messiah."  A  wonderful  personality  spoke  through  her 
voice.  All  anxieties,  spiritual  and  secular,  fled  away 
when  she  sang  "Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  labor  and  are 
heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest";  and  it  was  im- 
possible to  doubt  the  Resurrection  while  she  was  sing- 
ing "I  know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth."  She  seemed  a 
celestial  witness;  to  doubt  her  testimony  was  to  doubt 
her  veracity. 

Two  years  later  came  Julien,  composer  and  leader, 
bringing  with  him  his  Drury  Lane  Theater  Orchestra. 
He  also,  if  I  mistake  not,  was  one  of  Barnum's  gifts  to 
America.  His  repertoire  was  not  exactly  classical.  It 
was  largely  dance  music,  and  it  was  very  popular.  One 
of  his  waltzes  I  can  play  even  now  —  or  at  least  the 
opening  strain  of  it  —  on  the  piano,  from  memory.  Two 
letters  which  I  wrote  at  the  time  to  my  cousin  describ- 
ing two  of  his  concerts  may  serve  to  illustrate  the  musical 
taste  of  that  age.  How  he  got  together  a  chorus  and  or- 
chestra of  fifteen  hundred  I  do  not  know.  My  impres- 
sion is  that  it  was  not  musically  more  effective  than  a 
chorus  and  orchestra  of  two  or  three  hundred  in  a  con- 
cert hall  of  ordinary  size. 

Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  Friday,  June  16,  1854. 

We  all  went  to  the  Crystal  Palace  last  night  to  attend  the 
musical  congress.    I  send,  enclosed,  a  report  of  the  proceedings, 


30  REMINISCENCES 

and  after  reading  that  you  will  know  all  about  it  that  I  know. 
The  concert  was  great,  the  crowd  was  grand.  After  riding  up 
in  an  omnibus  so  full  inside  that  Austin,  Edward,  and  I  had 
to  ride  on  top,  and  so  full  on  top  that  we  had  nearly  fallen 
through  inside,  after  riding  through  a  street,  ordinarily  quiet, 
now  full  of  carriages  going  in  two  long  lines,  one  up,  the  other 
down,  like  two  funerals  passing  each  other,  after  tumbling  out 
of  our  onmibus  and  coming  into  a  new  crowd  swarming  around 
the  Crystal  Palace  like  so  many  bees  around  a  hogshead  of 
sugar,  after  crowding  through  one  of  three  entrances,  where  the 
crowd  was  such  as  to  require  three  people  to  take  the  tickets, 
we  emerged  finally  into  the  Crystal  Palace  and  were  immerged 
in  a  greater  crowd  than  before. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  great  dome  under  which  we  stand, 
nothing  in  the  light  and  graceful  arches  which  surround  us, 
nothing  in  any  curious  device  or  cunning  mechanism  which  you 
shall  find  within  this  building,  nothing  in  any  lifelike  statue, 
nothing  in  any  exquisitely  colored  painting,  nothing  even  in 
the  music  which  has  brought  us  here  together,  which  can  com- 
pare for  beauty  or  for  grandeur,  with  such  a  crowd,  expectant, 
eager,  happy,  as  is  here  —  people  everywhere.  The  whole 
body  of  the  floor  filled  with  reserved  seats  and  black  with 
people.  Stairways  impassable,  turned  into  tiers  of  sofas,  filled 
with  people.  Ladders,  tables,  boards  turned  on  one  side 
changed  suddenly,  by  temporary  cabinet-makers,  into  settees, 
covered  with  people.  Galleries  railed  round  with  lines  of 
people.  People  even  hanging  outside  the  railing  on  the  stair- 
ways, and  sitting  on  the  very  ornaments  of  the  gallery.  People 
everywhere.  Hurrying  to  and  fro  in  by-passageways;  prome- 
nading on  the  balconies;  creeping  round  high  up  in  the  dome, 
on  the  little  platform  where  the  lamplighter  goes  to  light  the 
chandelier;  crowding  from  the  hot  Palace  into  the  hotter  ice- 
cream saloons  adjoining,  and  crowding  out  again;  and  finally, 
having  given  up  all  hope  of  hearing  the  music,  going  out  in  such 
crowds  that,  when  we  leave  in  the  middle  of  the  second  part 
we  have  to  go  down  a  block  to  get  into  an  omnibus,  as  it  is 
coming  up,  in  order  to  obtain  a  seat. 

The  first  part  of  the  concert  consisted  entirely  of  selections 
from  the  "Messiah."  "Worthy  is  the  Lamb"  sounds  not 
badly  when  sung  and  played  by  fifteen  hundred  performers. 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN   1850  31 

We  came  away  at  the  middle  of  the  second  part.  So  we  did 
not  hear  the  "Fireman's  Quadrille."  I  am  going  to  hear  that 
yet,  however.  I  wished  you  could  have  been  there.  I  wish  you 
could  yet  go.  They  ought  to  finish  by  singing  "Old  Hundred " 
—  Doxology  —  audience  requested  to  rise  and  join.  There 
would  not  be  a  whole  pane  left  in  the  building. 

I  do  not  think  that  I  am  mistaken  in  believing  that 
the  moral  standards  in  1850,  no  less  than  the  aesthetic  \/ 
standards,  were  lower  than  they  are  in  1913.  I  can  re- 
member when  A.  T.  Stewart  first  introduced  the  one- 
price  system  into  the  retail  stores  of  New  York,  and  how 
great  an  innovation  it  was,  and  to  the  conservative 
spirits  how  impracticable  it  seemed.  Before  this  inno- 
vation the  ladies  in  their  shopping  haggled  about  the 
price,  much  as  I  believe  the  buyers  of  horses  do  now, 
and  in  the  fashion,  though  not  to  the  extent,  still  pur- 
sued by  shoppers  in  the  Orient.  Drinking  and  drunken- 
ness were  common.  The  Washingtonian  movement  had 
abolished  drinking  from  the  ministers'  meetings,  but 
not  from  the  social  parlors.  On  New  Year's  Day  the  old 
Dutch  custom  was  still  kept  up;  the  ladies  kept  open 
house,  the  men  paid  in  one  day  their  formal  calls  for 
the  year.  Cake  and  wine  were  the  easiest  things  for  a 
hospitable  hostess  to  serve.  By  six  o'clock  one  fully  ex- 
pected to  see  well-dressed  gentlemen  not  only  reeling  in 
the  streets,  but  also  showing  by  their  unsteady  gait  and 
their  loosened  tongues  in  the  ladies'  parlors  the  effect  of 
their  excess.  It  was  largely  due  to  this  fact  that  the 
custom  of  open  houses  on  New  Year's  Day  came  to  an 
end.  I  was  not  a  total  abstainer.  In  fact,  my  doctor, 
who  was  himself  a  vigorous  advocate  of  the  temperance 
cause,  prescribed  ale  and  porter  for  me  with  my  dinner, 
and,  as  my  father  paid  my  medical  bills,  I  had  no  pecu- 
niary reason  for  total  abstinence.   And  as  in  those  days 


32  REMINISCENCES 

there  were  no  "splits"  and  I  could  not  possibly  drink 
an  entire  bottle  of  either  Scotch  ale  or  London  porter, 
my  brothers  usually  shared  my  "medicine"  with  me. 
So  far  as  I  remember,  I  never  was  inside  a  saloon  or 
bar-room,  except  as  I  passed  through  one  to  the  restau- 
rant for  a  meal.  And  I  have  a  distinct  impression  that 
at  the  time  I  felt  that  some  of  my  college  mates  looked 
on  me,  and  on  those  of  like  temperate  habits,  as  lacking 
in  virility  because  we  never  had  gone  through  the  ex- 
perience of  being  drunk.  Drunkenness  was  not  then  the 
"bad  form"  which  I  judge  it  to  be  in  practically  all 
social  circles  to-day. 

The  street-walkers  were  much  more  in  evidence  then 
than  they  are  to-day;  or  is  it  only  that  they  were  more 
in  evidence  to  a  youth  under  seventeen  than  they  are 
to  a  man  over  seventy.^  I  do  not  think  that  is  all.  That 
I  should  not  be  accosted  now  as  I  often  was  then  is 
natural  enough;  but  I  have  eyes  to  see  and  some  com- 
mon sense  to  judge  whether  the  women  I  see  upon  the 
broad  and  well-lighted  streets  between  eleven  and  twelve 
o'clock  are  professionals  or  not.  The  upper  gallery  in 
most,  if  not  all,  of  the  theaters  was  reserved  for  such 
women,  where  they  might  ply  their  trade,  and  no  woman 
was  allowed  on  the  floor  or  in  the  first  gallery  of  most 
theaters  unless  accompanied  by  a  man  as  a  guarantee  of 
her  respectability. 

A  municipal  police  had  been  organized  before  I  came 
to  Hve  in  New  York,  but  an  incident  in  my  personal  ex- 
perience leads  me  to  believe  that  the  police  conditions 
were  at  least  no  better  than  they  are  now  —  probably 
worse.  I  think  the  immediate  occasion  of  this  incident 
was  one  of  those  periodical  violations  by  the  State  Legis- 
lature of  the  principle  of  home  rule,  which,  in  an  attempt 
to  reform  municipal  conditions  by  legislative  action,  has 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN   1850  33 

done  so  much  to  prevent  real  and  lasting  municipal  re- 
form. As  I  recall  the  history,  the  Legislature  had  at- 
tempted to  put  the  municipal  police  under  State  control; 
the  attempt  was  resisted  by  Mayor  Wood;  and  for  a 
week  or  two  at  least,  the  police  was,  in  consequence, 
disorganized  and  demoralized.  For  my  account  of  the 
riot  which  ensued  I  am  not  dependent  on  my  memory. 
The  following  account  of  it  I  wrote  at  the  time  to  my 
cousin:  — 

Friday,  July  10,  1857. 

You  have,  I  presume,  already  received  from  me  a  news- 
paper containing  pretty  full  accounts  of  the  late  riots.  I  can 
give  you  also  a  little  of  the  view  of  an  "eye-witness."  I  spent 
the  Fourth  in  Orange,  New  Jersey,  coming  back  to  New  York 
about  five  in  the  afternoon.  I  suppose  that  region  of  New 
York  City  contained  between  Canal  Street  on  the  north.  Bow- 
ery and  Chatham  Street  on  the  east.  Chambers  Street  on  the 
south,  and  Broadway  on  the  west  contains  more  squalid  pov- 
erty and  abominable  wickedness  than  any  area  of  equal  size 
in  the  world.  I  do  not  know  about  the  outcast  places  of  Lon- 
don and  Paris,  but  I  should  not  imagine  they  could  be  worse. 
This  region  contains  the  famous  Five  Points  and  the  Sixth 
Ward,  which  rejoices  in  the  well-earned  sobriquet  of  the 
Bloody  Sixth.  As  I  was  leisurely  sauntering  up  Broadway  to 
my  room  after  dinner,  I  saw  on  the  corner  of  Broadway  and 
White  Street  (a  street  that  runs  down  into  the  center  of  this 
region)  a  crowd  assembled  looking  down  the  street.  I  crossed 
over,  and,  the  crowd  being  more  dense  towards  the  Five  Points, 
I,  expecting  a  riot,  walked  down  to  the  scene  of  disorder.  As 
I  passed  by  the  station  house  which  stands  in  White  Street,  I 
passed  five  or  six  policemen  coming  up  the  street,  one  after  the 
other,  with  men  whom  they  had  arrested,  their  heads  cut  open 
and  the  blood  streaming  over  their  faces.  One  policeman  was 
coming  up  the  sidewalk  alone,  reeling  like  a  drunken  man,  his 
face  covered  with  blood.  I  followed  on  in  the  expectation  of 
finding  the  cause  of  the  difficulty;  and  on  the  corner  of  White 
and  Orange  Streets  I  came  upon  it.  A  little  way  up  the  street 
I  could  see  here  and  there  stones  and  bricks  flying.    One  man 


34  REMINISCENCES 

stood  on  the  top  of  his  house,  pulled  bricks  from  the  chimney 
and  fired  them  upon  the  heads  of  those  below.  His  wife  stood 
by  him,  whether  encouraging  him  or  urging  him  to  desist  I 
could  not  tell.  I  went  some  way  up  the  street,  but,  finding 
myself  getting  very  fast  into  the  crowd  and  in  dangerous  prox- 
imity to  the  stones  and  bricks,  I  beat  a  retreat  and  passed 
round  through  Canal  Street  into  Bowery  and  so  down  to 
Bayard  Street.  On  the  corner  of  Bayard  and'Bowery  there  was  a 
tremendous  crowd.  Every  three  or  four  minutes  there  would  be 
a  rush  and  they  would  come  tearing  down  Bowery;  I  could  hear 
shots  exchanged  but  could  not  very  safely  stand  in  the  crowd 
on  the  corner  of  the  street  nor  where  I  could  see  anything. 

It  soon  became  evident,  however,  that  the  battle  was  going 
on  in  Bayard  Street,  and  I  worked  my  way  along  till  I  espied  a 
cheap  restaurant  and  lodging-house  on  the  corner  of  Bayard 
and  Bowery,  and  I  made  a  rush  for  it.  It  was  locked  and  a 
placard  announced  that  no  meals  would  be  served  there  after 
the  dinner  hour.  I  rattled  at  the  door,  and  presently  a  waiter 
came,  opened  the  door  a  crack,  to  look  at  me,  but  the  crack 
was  wide  enough  to  let  me  squeeze  in,  which  I  did  before  he 
had  time  to  see  that  I  did  not  belong  there.  Then,  by  dint  of 
taking  a  night's  lodging  and  paying  for  it  twenty-five  cents,  I 
got  upstairs  and  out  on  the  balcony  of  the  hotel  facing  Bayard 
Street.  Here  I  was  directly  over  the  battle  and  in  a  splendid 
position  to  see  it.  A  crowd  of  Bowery  boys  occupied  Bayard 
Street,  immediately  under  my  feet.  The  Dead  Rabbits  occu- 
pied the  other  end  of  the  same  street.  Midway  between  the 
two  belligerent  forces  was  an  empty  ground  in  which  there  lay, 
it  so  happened,  two  or  three  piles  of  bricks  used  in  a  building 
that  was  going  up  there.  Sometimes  the  Bowery  boys  would 
rush  down  the  street,  obtain  possession  of  the  brick  pile,  and 
drive  the  Dead  Rabbits  before  them;  then  the  Dead  Rabbits 
would  return  and  themselves  obtain  the  bricks,  and  so  the 
battle  raged.  There  were  plenty  of  pistols  in  use  when  I  got 
there  —  at  a  little  before  seven  —  and  very  soon  after  mus- 
kets were  put  into  requisition.  An  ordinary  brick  was  too 
merciful  a  missile.  Before  the  fighter  fired  it,  he  always  threw 
it  two  or  three  times  upon  the  hard  pavement  to  break  off  its 
soft,  crumbly  edges.  There  was  among  the  Bowery  boys,  at 
our  end  of  the  street,  a  young  Italian;  not,  I  should  think,  over 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN   1850  35 

sixteen  or  seventeen  years  of  age.  He  had  a  pistol  with  him, 
and  was  among  the  vanguard  always.  Yet  he  did  not  seem  to 
be  malicious,  but  to  be  in  the  battle  out  of  motives  of  excite- 
ment and  curiosity  more  than  anger  and  revenge.  He  was  one 
of  the  first  to  fall  after  the  muskets  were  brought  out.  He  was 
carried  by  us,  directly  under  our  feet  as  we  stood  on  the  piazza 
of  the  second  story.  There  was  a  little  hole  in  his  left  breast, 
a  little  spot  of  blood  on  his  white  linen  coat.  But  the  blood 
was  his  heart's  blood,  and  the  hole  was  large  enough  to  give 
escape  to  his  life.  He  was  writhing  in  the  most  horrible  death 
agonies.  It  was  a  fearful  sight;  for,  rough  as  were  his  com- 
panions, he  was  a  beautiful  boy.  .  .  . 

After  this  the  battle  grew  more  determined  and  serious, 
though  lessened  in  numbers.  A  great  many  who  were  willing 
to  take  their  chance  of  a  stone  or  a  brick  stood  at  a  respectful 
distance  from  a  musket.  Just  about  this  time  the  Bowery 
boys  obtained  possession  of  Elizabeth  Street,  and,  collecting 
there  a  number  of  carts  and  wagons,  ran  them  out  across  Bay- 
ard Street  and  so  made  a  barricade  under  whose  cover  they 
fought  after  that.  The  leader  of  the  Dead  Rabbits  was  a  great 
strapping  Irishman  in  a  red  shirt.  He  owned  the  Dead  Rabbits' 
muskets  and,  I  think,  shot  the  Italian.  I  saw  him  come  out  a 
little  in  advance  of  his  party,  take  careful  aim  at  the  Bowery 
party,  and  fire.  There  was  a  flash  but  no  report.  His  gun  had 
missed  fire.  He  took  it  from  his  shoulder  to  examine  the  lock. 
He  was  a  good  target.  A  Bowery  boy  crept  up  behind  their 
barricade  of  wagons;  rested  his  musket  on  the  wheel;  and 
took  deliberate  aim  at  the  opposing  chief  as  he  stood  there  ex- 
amining the  lock  of  his  own  gun.  There  was  a  flash,  a  report, 
and  the  Dead  Rabbit  fell  like  a  log,  a  dead  rabbit  in  verity. 
Shortly  after  he  fell  a  woman  came  out  and  took  his  place,  ex- 
cept she  was  far  more  venturesome.  I  imagined  her  to  be  his 
wife.  She  would  come  close  up  to  the  barricade,  fill  her  arms 
full  of  bricks,  and  return  with  them  to  her  party.  At  first  the 
Bowery  boys  only  called  to  her  to  go  away.  To  this  she  paid 
no  attention.  This  was  followed  by  a  few  bricks,  about  which 
she  apparently  cared  as  little.  She  still  remained  while  pistol 
bullets  and  bricks  rained  about  her,  caring  about  them  as  little 
as  you  or  I  might  about  a  rain-storm.  Finally,  when  her  apron 
was  full  of  bricks,  she  went  back  as  quietly  as  she  came.    But 


36  REMINISCENCES 

the  Dead  Rabbits  would  not  let  her  return.  When  I  came 
away  at  about  8  p.m.  the  battle  was  still  raging,  but  not  so 
furiously  as  it  had  been,  and  I  believe  it  was  stopped  very  soon 
after  I  came  away.  It  was  the  first  time  I  ever  saw  a  riot,  and 
I  think  it  was  the  most  horrible  sight  I  ever  saw. 

'  I  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  frighten  my  cousin  by 
telling  her  why  I  came  away.  When  a  bullet  whizzed  by 
me  and  flattened  itself  against  the  brick  wall  over  my 
head,  I  thought  it  was  time  for  me  to  retreat,  which  I 
did  with  celerity.  This  is  the  nearest  I  have  ever  been 
to  a  battle,  and  I  have  never  desired  to  be  any  nearer. 
My  military  ambition  is  not  ardent. 

I  have  said  that  I  do  not  remember  ever  going  into 
a  bar-room  or  saloon;  to  that  statement  I  must  make 
one  exception.  I  wanted  to  know  the  city  from  the  top 
to  the  bottom,  its  vices  as  well  as  its  virtues.  This  de- 
sire was  partly  natural,  partly  morbid.  Defensible  or 
indefensible,  it  existed.  Combining  with  two  or  three 
of  my  college  mates,  we  hired  a  policeman  to  take  us 
through  New  York.  He  did  the  job  apparently  with 
thoroughness.  He  took  us  into  the  parlors  of  one  or  two 
houses  in  Mercer  Street,  which  was  then  a  prostitutes' 
thoroughfare;  then  through  the  Five  Points,  where  no 
man  dared  to  go  by  night  alone,  and  even  by  day  went 
at  some  hazard;  and  then  to  the  scene  of  the  worst 
haunts  of  the  sailors  in  Water  Street.  I  would  not  rec- 
ommend this  method  of  moral  vaccination  in  general, 
but  it  was  effectual  in  my  case.  There  has  never  since 
that  visit  been  for  me  any  glamour  in  vice.  I  had  seen 
it  as  a  critical  spectator  in  all  its  deformity,  and  good 
taste  would  have  kept  me  from  it  even  if  moral  principle 
did  not.  We  did  not  visit  any  gambling-house.  The  in- 
terior of  a  gambling-hell  I  never  saw  until  many  years 
after,  when,  with  my  wife  and  some  other  friends,  I 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN  1850  37 

visited  Monte  Carlo,  where  I  saw  the  most  unromantic 
and  stupid  exhibition  of  purely  sordid  avarice  my  eyes 
ever  beheld. 

I  always  went  to  church.  Of  my  religious  experience 
I  shall  speak  hereafter,  tracing  it  through  the  various 
stages  of  its  growth  from  boyhood  to  old  age.  Enough  to 
say  here  that  I  cannot  share  the  behef  of  those  who 
think,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  feel,  that  the  church  has 
degenerated  in  the  last  half-century.  During  a  part  of 
that  time  I  attended  the  Mercer  Street  Presbyterian 
Church.  Some  forty  or  fifty  boys  and  girls  from  an 
orphan  asylum  made  what  seemed  to  me  an  important 
part  of  the  congregation.  The  boys  sat  in  one  gallery, 
the  girls  in  the  gallery  opposite.  I  do  not  recall  that  I 
ever  heard  the  minister  tell  a  story,  use  an  illustra- 
tion, or  point  a  moral  lesson  which  by  any  possibility 
could  appeal  to  these  children.  There  may  have  been 
connected  with  this  church  some  mission  chapel,  but 
I  do  not  think  so.  If  so,  it  was  not  in  evidence.  I  do  not 
think  I  ever  heard  of  one.  The  attitude  of  the  churches 
in  New  York  City  was  then  much  what  the  attitude  of 
the  village  church  is  to-day :  its  duty  was  to  care  for  the 
individuals  and  the  families  in  its  own  congregation. 
For  these  attendants  there  were  plenty  of  services  — 
not  to  say  a  surplus;  but  going  out  into  the  world  preach- 
ing the  Gospel  to  every  creature  was  left  to  be  done  by 
the  missionary  societies,  which  were  supported  by  the 
churches  with  more  or  less  liberality.  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  in  Brooklyn,  and  some  time  later  Dr.  W.  S. 
Rainsford  in  New  York,  were  pioneers  in  church  mis- 
sionary work.  It  hardly  need  be  said  that  there  was  no 
social  settlement  work  and  no  Young  Women's  Chris- 
tian Association;  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associ- 
ation was  just  coming  into  existence. 


38  REMINISCENCES 

In  this  city  I  lived  with  my  two  older  brothers,  Ben- 
jamin Vaughan  and  Austin,  during  my  college  days,  from 
1849  to  1853  inclusive,  and  for  six  years  thereafter.  My 
father  had  no  home.  He  married  Mrs.  Mary  Dana  Wood- 
bury in  1853,  but  they  never  kept  house;  traveled  much; 
and  boarded  when  in  this  country.  If  there  had  been  a 
room  available  in  my  Uncle  John's  home,  which  I  doubt, 
a  boarding-school  for  girls  would  have  been  no  place  for 
a  college  boy  of  fourteen.  Petted  and  spoiled  by  girls, 
I  should  have  been  subjected  to  the  temptation  to 
vanity  and  intellectual  idleness,  more  to  be  dreaded 
than  the  temptations  of  an  independent  life  under  the 
guardianship  of  two  older  brothers  in  the  city.  And 
before  I  graduated,  my  father  and  Uncle  John  had  dis- 
continued the  school,  given  up  the  profession  of  teach- 
ing altogether,  and  betaken  themselves  to  authorship, 
to  which  the  remainder  of  their  lives  was  given.  This 
was  not  because  of  any  lack  of  success.  The  school  was, 
both  from  an  educational  and  a  financial  point  of  view, 
successful  to  the  end.  But  my  father  and  my  Uncle 
John  had  become  increasingly  interested  in  authorship, 
and  found  the  two  vocations  of  author  and  teacher  in- 
consistent. My  Uncle  John  removed  to  Brunswick, 
Maine,  his  birthplace,  where  he  had  the  advantage  of 
Bowdoin  College  Library,  and  where  he  completed  the 
"Life  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,"  which  gave  to  the  cir- 
culation of  "Harper's  New  Monthly  Magazine"  —  then 
really  "new"  —  a  great  impetus,  and  to  the  author 
simultaneously  a  deluge  of  criticism  and  a  great  popular 
reputation. 

There  were  no  such  bachelor  apartments  in  New  York 
City  in  1850  as  now  encourage  bachelordom  and  dis- 
courage marriage.  There  were  few  clubs.  We  three 
brothers  generally  lived  in  hired  rooms  and  took  our 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN  1850  39 

meals  at  restaurants.  Once  we  tried  breakfasting  in  our 
own  rooms,  but  that  was  expensively  luxurious.  Once 
we  tried  to  economize  by  boarding  in  Brooklyn.  Going 
home  one  late  afternoon,  I  found  a  sheriff  in  charge,  the 
landlady  having  failed  and  her  property  having  been 
taken  in  execution.  We  had  some  difficulty  in  persuad- 
ing the  sheriff  to  let  us  take  our  property,  which  con- 
sisted of  clothing  and  some  books.  Perhaps  the  fact  that 
my  brother  Vaughan  had  at  that  time  been  admitted  to 
the  bar  and  had  some  knowledge  of  the  law  helped  to 
overcome  the  reluctance  of  the  sheriff.  We  camped  out 
that  night  in  my  brother's  office.  I  slept,  I  remember, 
on  the  floor,  with  a  Webster's  Dictionary  for  a  pillow. 
That  was  our  last  attempt  at  boarding.  After  my 
brother  Vaughan  graduated  and  went  to  Harvard  Law 
School  and  before  he  came  back  and  was  admitted  to 
the  bar,  my  brother  Austin  and  I  occupied  together  a 
room  so  small  that  when  our  turn-up  bedstead  was 
opened  out  on  the  floor  the  entrance  to  the  room  was 
completely  blocked.  One  night  about  Christmas,  my 
brother  Vaughan  arriving  unexpectedly  late  at  night, 
we  had  to  make  up  the  bed  in  order  to  let  him  in. 

My  finances  were  under  the  charge  of  my  second 
brother,  Austin.  Our  allowances  were  paid  to  us  monthly. 
Delmonico  had  one  restaurant  downtown  in  Beaver 
Street,  and  another  on  the  corner  of  Chambers  Street 
and  Broadway.  At  the  beginning  of  the  month,  when 
we  were  rich,  we  used  to  go  to  Delmonico's;  a  little  later, 
as  the  purse  grew  lighter,  to  "Gosling's,"  a  Broadway 
restaurant,  or  to  one  of  the  still  cheaper  restaurants  on 
one  of  the  side  streets;  and  finally  for  the  last  three 
or  four  days  of  the  month  we  were  likely  to  take  our 
meals  at  "Sweeney's,"  on  Chatham  Street,  where  we 
got,  if  I  recollect  aright,  a  plate  of  wheat  cakes  for  six- 


40  REMINISCENCES 

pence  and  a  cup  of  coffee  for  threepence.  In  those  days 
the  common  currency  in  New  York  was  shilHngs  and 
pence,  not  dimes  and  nickels.  The  restaurant  was  a 
long  hall,  with  a  counter  at  the  rear,  behind  which  was 
the  kitchen.  The  waiter  took  the  orders  of 'three  or  four 
customers  at  once,  then,  as  he  walked  back  between  the 
tables  to  the  kitchen,  shouted  out  the  orders,  so  that 
the  provisions  might  be  ready  for  him  and  the  customers 
not  kept  waiting  —  a  custom  which  gave  rise  to  a  comic 
song  describing  how  a  bashful  and  impecunious  youth 
ordered  "one  fish-ball  and  a  little  bread  and  butter,  if 
you  please,"  and  with  dismay  heard 

"The  waiter  roar  it  through  the  hall, 
We  don't  give  bread  with  one  fish-ball." 

The  rolls,  in  the  language  of  our  homes  called  biscuits, 
were  baked  in  a  pan;  if  one  wished  a  crusty  roll  he  called 
for  a  roll  outside,  if  one  without  crust  he  called  for  a  roll 
inside.  Rolls  and  Indian  cakes  with  a  cup  of  coffee 
were  a  favorite  order  for  breakfast  if  one  were  economi- 
cally inclined;  which  gave  rise  to  the  story,  whether  my 
brother's  invention  or  an  incident  founded  on  fact  I  do 
not  know,  of  the  waiter  who  roared  out  the  order,  *'Two 
Indians  done  brown  and  a  roll  inside." 
'"^  Well,  it  was  a  happy  time,  and  what  would  now  be 
to  me  discomforts  rather  added  to  the  fun.  But  it 
all  seems  to  me  remote  and  unreal.  I  cannot  think  that 
I  was  that  boy  and  that  New  York  City  was  that  city. 
As  I  attempt  to  recall  it  out  of  the  misty  past,  with 
grave  doubts  how  much  of  my  recollection  is  memory 
and  how  much  imagination,  it  seems  less  real  to  me  than 
the  boyhood  of  David  Copperfield.  It  was  a  life  of 
almost  absolute  freedom,  perhaps  of  freedom  too  abso- 
lute.   And  yet  we  lived  clean  and  morally  wholesome 


Mrs.  Elbridge  Cutler  ("Aunt  Clara") 
Mrs.  John  S.  C.  Abbott  ("Aunt  Jane")        Mrs.  Charles  E.  Abbott  ("Aunt  Elizabeth  ") 


THE   THREE   SECOND   MOTHERS 


NEW  YORK  CITY  IN   1850  41 

lives.  I  cannot  recall  that  even  the  supposedly  awful 
temptations  of  a  city  life  were  temptations  to  us.  Our 
companions  were  clean  companions,  our  recreations  were 
clean  recreations,  the  plays  we  went  to  were  clean  plays. 
Perhaps  this  was  due  to  our  inheritance;  probably  for 
me  it  was  largely  due  to  the  guardianship  of  my  older 
brothers.  I  am  sure  that  for  all  of  us  the  ever  ready  wel- 
come to  the  home  life  of  the  Abbott  School  was  a  great 
protection.  Thither  we  went  with  the  freedom  of 
brothers.  And  as  we  were  only  three  boys  and  there 
were  twenty-five  or  thirty  girls  and  we  were  without 
competitors,  we  were  general  favorites.  For  Sunday 
evenings  my  Uncle  John,  who  conducted  the  boarding 
department  of  the  Abbott  School,  in  Lafayette  Place, 
established  a  service  of  song,  borrowed  from  my  grand- 
father's custom,  and  in  this  family  song  service  we  often, 
perhaps  habitually,  had  a  part.  We  joined  in  the  family 
festivities  of  Christmas  Eve.  Among  my  valued  memo- 
rabilia is  a  prayer-book  which  six  Episcopalian  girls  gave 
to  me  at  a  time  when  I  was  quite  regularly  attending 
an  Episcopal  church. 

We  were  not  therefore  homeless  boys,  and  I  was  not 
motherless.  I  had  three  mothers:  in  the  school  at  Nor- 
wich my  Aunt  Elizabeth;  in  New  York  my  Aunt  Jane, 
my  Uncle  John's  wife;  in  Farmington,  Maine,  where  I 
went  for  my  vacations,  my  Aunt  Clara.  Perhaps  some- 
thing in  an  apparently  feeble  physique,  perhaps  some- 
thing in  a  naturally  dependent  and  clinging  nature, 
especially  commended  me  to  their  affectionate  care. 
Certainly  I  can  never  repay,  even  in  gratitude,  much 
less  in  any  other  coin  than  that  of  love,  the  debt  I  owe 
to  them.  And  all  the  time,  most  sacred  of  all,  was  the 
faith  that  my  mother  knew  and  cared;  that  every  de- 
feat I  suffered  was  a  sorrow  to  her,  and  every  victory  I 


42  REMINISCENCES 

won  added  to  her  joy.  Yes,  I  had  four  mothers  —  three 
on  earth  and  one  in  heaven.  And  they  all  cared  for  me. 
And  to  their  influence  I  perhaps  most  of  all  owe  the 
fact  that  those  four  years  of  college  life  were  years  of 
comparative  innocence.  . 


CHAPTER  III 

AN  AMERICAN   COLLEGE   IN   1850 

IN  1849  I  thought  I  was  prepared  for  college.  My 
Uncle  Charles  did  not  agree  with  me.  He  was  right 
and  I  was  wrong.  But  nevertheless  I  had  my  way. 
He  had  not  thought,  a  year  before,  that  I  was  ready  to 
take  up  Greek.  So  I  had  got  hold,  somehow,  of  a  little 
Greek  grammar  and  studied  it  by  myself  out  of  school 
hours.  My  persistence  won,  and  I  was  put  into  the 
Greek  class;  my  impression  is  that  it  consisted  of  two 
pupils.  By  the  summer  of  1849  I  had  read,  as  I  recall, 
a  little  of  Xenophon  and  two  or  three  books  of  the 
"Iliad,"  but  my  preparation  in  grammar  was  both 
scanty  and  superficial.  I  had  not  read  Virgil;  but  I 
knew  the  Latin  grammar  almost  as  I  knew  my  alphabet; 
and  I  was  so  familiar  with  the  Latin  of  Cicero  that 
when  we  took  up  "De  Senectute"  and  "DeAmicitia" 
in  college  I  was  accustomed,  while  the  class  was  re- 
citing the  day's  lesson,  to  read  to  myself  the  lesson 
for  the  next  day,  leaving  occasional  unknown  words 
and  perplexing  constructions  to  be  examined  when  I  got 
home. 

But  before  I  entered  college  I  was,  very  unexpectedly 
to  myself,  confronted  with  one  of  the  most  serious 
problems  of  my  life.  My  father  called  me  into  his  room 
one  day  —  this  was  probably  in  the  spring  vacation  in 
1849  —  and  something  like  the  following  colloquy  oc- 
curred between  us: — 


44  REMINISCENCES 

Father.  Lyman,  the  time  has  about  come  for  you  to  decide 
whether  you  will  go  to  college. 

Myself.  Why,  father,  I  always  supposed  that  of  course  I 
was  going  to  college. 

Father.  No;  not  of  course.  I  have  estimated  that  it  will 
cost  me  about  five  hundred  dollars  a  year  to  carry  you  through 
college.  You  can  go  into  business  next  fall  and  begin  at  once 
to  earn  your  own  livelihood.  In  that  case,  I  should  put  aside 
five  hundred  dollars  a  year  for  you,  and  at  the  end  of  four  years 
you  would  have  a  capital  of  two  thousand  dollars  and  interest, 
with  which  to  go  into  business. 

Myself.  Well,  father,  of  course  if  you  think  it  best  I  should 
go  into  business,  I  am  willing. 

Father.  Oh,  no !  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  best.  But  the  ques- 
tion is  one  for  you  to  decide.  Would  you  rather  have  a  college 
education  or  the  two  thousand  dollars? 

Myself.   What  do  you  advise? 

He  would  give  me  no  advice.  He  put  before  me  in  a 
very  practical  fashion  the  relative  advantages  and  the 
relative  diflSculties  in  a  professional  career  and  in  a  busi- 
ness career;  told  me  to  think  it  over  for  two  or  three 
days  and  then  tell  him  my  decision.  Up  to  that  time  I 
had  probably  never  had  more  than  five  dollars  in  my 
pocket  at  any  one  time,  and  two  thousand  dollars  seemed 
to  me  an  enormous  fortune.  When,  at  the  end  of  the 
three  or  four  days,  I  came  to  my  father  with  my  de- 
cision to  take  the  education,  he  simply  remarked:  "I 
am  very  glad.  I  think  it  is  an  excellent  plan  for  a 
boy  to  go  to  college,  but  a  very  poor  plan  for  a  boy  to 
be  sent." 

The  result  was  wholly  beneficial.  Throughout  my 
college  days  I  realized  that  I  was  spending  my  own  good 
money  for  my  education,  and  I  determined  to  get  my 
money's  worth.  Though  I  entered  college  the  youngest 
in  my  class  and  somewhat  handicapped  by  inadequate 
preparation  and  a  feeble  physique,  which  sent  me  away 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  1850  45 

every  spring  four  or  five  weeks  before  the  college  term 
closed,  I  graduated  fourth  in  a  class  of  sixteen. 

Behold  me,  then,  a  freshman  in  the  University  of  the 
City  of  New  York,  still  decidedly  under  the  average  in 
weight  and  somewhat  under  the  average  in  size  for  my 
age,  with  my  arm  in  a  sling,  for  I  had  broken  it  two  days 
before  I  finally  left  school  for  college,  and  with  a  pale 
face  which  gave  me  an  unearned  reputation  for  being 
very  studious. 

The  University  of  the  City  of  New  York  justified  its 
right  to  its  title  by  the  fact  that  it  had  a  grammar  school, 
which  was  one  of  the  best  secondary  schools  in  the  city, 
and  a  medical  school  of  good  standing.  My  brother 
Vaughan  said  that  New  York  City  had  three  medical 
schools  —  an  old  school,  a  new  school,  and  a  brand-new 
school.  The  University  Medical  School  was  the  new 
school.  But  its  building  was  in  another  part  of  the  city. 
I  do  not  now  know  where  it  was  situated.  To  me  as  a 
student  the  University  was  simply  one  of  the  smaller  of 
the  American  colleges  of  that  day. 

The  reader,  instinctively  comparing  the  University  of 
the  City  of  New  York  as  I  here  describe  it  with  the  mod- 
ern American  university,  such  as  Harvard,  Yale,  or 
Princeton,  will  see  in  the  comparison  evidences  of  the  mar- 
velous growth  of  the  higher  education  in  America  during 
the  last  half -century.  If  he  will  compare  my  Alma  Mater 
with  the  college  of  a  previous  epoch,  he  will  see  in  that 
comparison  evidences  of  the  no  less  marvelous  growth 
of  the  higher  education  in  the  quarter-century  preced- 
ing 1850.  There  lies  before  me  as  I  write  a  "Catalogue 
of  the  Officers  and  Students  of  Bowdoin  College,  Bruns- 
wick," Maine,  dated  1818.  The  entire  catalogue  is  con- 
tained on  one  sheet  of  paper  sixteen  and  a  half  inches 
by  fourteen  and  a  half;  that  is,  smaller  than  a  gentle- 


46  REMINISCENCES 

man's  ordinary-sized  pocket-handkerchief.  There  is  a 
total  of  thirty-seven  students,  and  the  faculty  consists 
of  a  President,  a  Professor  of  Mathematics  and  Natural 
Philosophy,  a  Lecturer  in  Chemistry  and  Mineralogy, 
a  Librarian,  and  three  tutors.  Six  years  later  my  father 
was  called  to  a  tutorship  in  Amherst  College,  Massa- 
chusetts. The  college  had  one  hundred  and  thirty-six 
students;  the  faculty  included  three  professors,  one  of 
whom  taught  both  Latin  and  Greek,  and  Jacob  Abbott, 
tutor,  who  also  had  charge  of  the  buildings  and  grounds, 
for  which  he  was  to  receive  a  small  unnamed  addition 
to  his  munificent  salary  of  six  hundred  dollars  a  year. 
He  was  also  a  little  later  requested,  in  addition  to  his 
other  duties,  "to  instruct  the  junior  class  in  mathe- 
matics and  philosophy  till  the  next  commencement." 
La  Croix's  Arithmetic  and  Day's  Algebra  were  a  part  of 
the  studies  of  the  freshman  class.  And  the  students  of 
Amherst  College  were  not,  I  think,  inferior  to  those  of 
other  American  colleges  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  That  was  in  1825.  By  1850  even  the 
small  American  colleges  had  made  a  considerable  ad- 
vance in  number  of  students,  size  of  faculty,  financial 
endowment,  and  scholastic  standards. 

The  University  of  the  City  of  New  York  occupied  a 
commodious  marble  building,  not  without  architectural 
dignity,  on  the  east  side  of  Washington  Square.  The 
lower  floor  was  used  by  the  University  grammar 
school,  where  my  oldest  brother,  Vaughan,  prepared  for 
college.  A  broad  stairway,  opening  directly  upon  the 
street,  led  up  to  a  hall  in  the  second  story  running  the 
full  length  of  the  building,  out  of  which  opened  the  recita- 
tion-rooms and  a  small  chapel,  large  enough  for  all  the 
academic  students  to  assemble  in.  They  never,  I  think, 
numbered  more  than  two  hundred.    The  third  story  con- 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  1850  47 

tained  a  much  larger  chapel,  of  Gothic  architecture,  two 
stories  of  the  building  in  height.  On  this  floor  were  also 
the  halls  of  the  two  literary  societies  of  the  college,  the 
Eucleian  and  the  Philomathean.  The  rooms  on  the 
upper  floor  were  rented  out  to  lodgers  or  as  offices. 
There  was  no  dormitory.  The  students  lived  at  home, 
or  where  they  could,  the  University  furnishing  the  in- 
struction, but  neither  board,  lodging,  nor  oversight.  In 
this  respect  the  University  was  more  German  than  Eng- 
lish. We  assembled  in  the  morning  for  prayers  in  the 
smaller  chapel.  After  a  so-called  devotional  exercise, 
which  with  most  of  us  was  not,  I  fear,  very  devotional,  we 
separated  to  our  various  recitation-rooms.  The  recita- 
tions occupied  us  for  the  next  three  hours,  about  one 
hour  each.  At  half-past  twelve  or  thereabouts  our  work 
at  the  University  came  to  an  end;  we  separated  to  our 
homes;  and  the  University  knew  us  no  more  until  the 
next  morning  at  nine  or  half-past  nine.  There  was  no 
gymnasium  and  there  were  no  athletics.  There  were 
three  or  four  Greek-letter  societies  that  met  I  know  not 
where,  but  I  never  belonged  to  one.  Secret  organiza- 
tions have  always  been  distasteful  to  me;  the  only  one 
to  which  I  ever  belonged  was  a  secret  loyal  league  or- 
ganized for  mutual  protection  during  the  Civil  War  in 
a  community  in  which  secrecy  was  thought  to  be  neces- 
sary for  safety. 

There  were,  however,  two  open  literary  societies,  the 
Philomathean  and  the  Eucleian.  With  my  brothers  I 
belonged  to  the  Eucleian  Society,  which,  I  believe,  still 
exists  in  a  flourishing  condition.  We  met  on  Friday 
evenings,  once  a  fortnight.  There  was  an  oration,  which 
was  criticised  both  as  to  its  matter  and  manner  by  the 
presiding  officer;  a  college  paper,  not  printed  but  simply 
read  by  the  editor  to  the  society;  and  a  debate,  which 


48  REMINISCENCES 

was  always  extemporaneous.  It  was  here  I  first  learned 
to  think  upon  my  feet,  and  so  laid  the  foundation  for  my 
lifelong  habit  of  extemporaneous  speech.  For  the  essen- 
tial condition  of  really  extemporaneous  speech  is  ability 
to  think  upon  one's  feet.  Without  that  ability  the  ex- 
temporaneous address  is  either  a  memoriter,  though  un- 
written, oration  or  a  rambling  and  discursive  talk 
unfreighted  with  any  thought.  The  value  of  the  old-time 
debating  societies  in  village,  school,  and  college  appears 
to  me  to  be  underestimated  in  our  times.  "In  the  West- 
minster debating  societies,"  says  Alfred  Austin  in  his 
autobiography,  "I  at  least  acquired  a  facility,  sometimes 
an  extemporaneous  facility,  of  utterance  that  has  been 
useful  to  me,  I  think,  all  through  life."  Similar  testi- 
mony will  be  found  in  the  biographies  of  Lord  Macaulay 
and  Mr.  Gladstone. 

T.  De  Witt  Talmage  was  a  member  of  my  class  and 
displayed  the  same  characteristics  which  made  him 
famous  in  after  life.  He  was  not  distinguished  for  his 
scholarship  in  the  classroom  nor  for  his  accuracy  of 
statement  in  his  college  speeches;  but  he  was  distin- 
guished for  a  vivid  though  not  subtle  imagination,  and 
a  boundless  good  feeling  which  made  him  the  friend  of 
everybody  and  every  one  his  friend.  He  had,  of  course, 
an  oration  at  Commencement,  and  he  is  the  only  college 
j  orator  I  have  ever  heard  whose  oration  was  repeatedly 
interrupted  by  the  spontaneous  applause  of  his  audience. 

There  was  in  the  University  no  laboratory  for  stu- 
dents' use,  either  chemical  or  physical.  There  was 
chemical  and  physical  apparatus  which  the  professor 
used  in  lecturing  to  us.  But  we  never  experimented. 
We  students  never  did  anything.  We  only  listened,  read 
our  books,  and  recited  our  lessons.  I  do  not  now  dis- 
tinctly recall  any  college  library,  and  as  I  was  then,  as  I 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE   IN   1850  49 

am  now,  very  fond  of  books,  and  as  I  did  during  college 
days  a  good  deal  of  unrequired  reading,  getting  the  books 
for  that  purpose  where  I  could,  I  am  reasonably  certain 
that  if  there  was  a  college  library,  it  was  insignificant 
and  played  no  important  part  in  our  college  life.  But 
each  of  the  literary  societies  had  its  library;  and  five 
minutes'  walk  from  the  University  was  the  Mercantile 
Library,  organized  for  merchants'  clerks,  but  available 
for  any  one  who  was  willing  to  pay  five  dollars  a  year 
for  the  privilege  of  membership.  Of  that  I  early  became 
a  member. 

The  object  of  the  American  college  in  1850  was  to 
prepare  the  student  for  one  of  the  three  learned  profes- 
sions —  law,  medicine,  or  the  ministry.  I  do  not  think 
that  any  one  of  the  members  of  my  class  looked  forward 
to  another  than  one  of  these  three  careers.  Engineering 
was  not  regarded  as  a  learned  profession,  nor  journalism, 
nor  literature,  nor  music,  nor  art,  nor  acting,  nor  agri- 
culture, nor  teaching,  nor  business.  For  business  what 
was  needed  was  not  education,  but  experience.  Teach- 
ing was  not  a  profession.  Very  few  chose  it  as  their  life 
work.  College  professors  frequently,  college  presidents 
almost  uniformly,  were  clergymen  who  from  choice  or 
necessity  had  left  the  pulpit  for  the  college  chair;  other 
teachers  had  generally  taken  up  the  work  for  bread-and- 
butter  reasons  or  en  route  to  something  else.  The  farmer 
looked  upon  "book  larnin'"  with  good-humored  con- 
tempt, not  without  some  justification,  since  the  agricul- 
tural books  and  papers  of  that  day  were  largely  the  work 
of  academicians  without  practical  experience. 

Literature,  music,  art,  and  the  stage  were  thought  to 
be  only  for  bohemians,  who  were  regarded  as  the  un- 
practical estrays  of  life  who  could  do  nothing  better  than 
act,  paint,  play,  and  write  stories.    No  equipment  was 


50  REMINISCENCES 

thought  necessary  for  the  lower  ranks  in  journalism, 
and  no  equipment  was  thought  adequate  for  the  higher 
ranks.  JournaHsts,  like  poets,  were  born,  not  made. 
The  Rensselaer  Polytechnic  School  of  Troy,  New  York, 
had  been  opened  in  1824;  another  engineering  school  in 
connection  with  Union  College  about  1850;  a  school  of 
agriculture  in  Michigan  in  the  same  year;  a  school  of 
design  in  connection  with  the  National  Academy  of  De- 
sign in  New  York  City  in  1825;  and  doubtless  there  were 
other  similar  attempts  to  broaden  the  scope  of  education. 
But  such  attempts  were  the  little-known  and  little- 
credited  work  of  lonely  pioneers.  Music  and  art  were 
taught  in  the  finishing  schools  for  girls;  that  is,  the  girl 
was  taught  to  play  a  dozen  pieces  on  the  piano  and  to 
copy  a  crayon  sketch  set  for  her  by  her  teacher.  There 
were  also  occasional  musical  institutes,  where  lectures 
in  harmony,  composition,  and  the  history  of  music  were 
given;  these  were  both  interesting  and  inspiring,  but 
could  not  serve  the  purpose  of  systematic  and  con- 
tinuous class  instruction. 

Normal  schools  in  America  had  been  established  by 
Horace  Mann  ten  years  before,  but  were  as  yet  unde- 
veloped; they  were  established  against  great  opposition 
from  teachers,  who  thought  the  educational  appliances 
of  the  Puritan  Fathers  were  good  enough  for  their  sons. 
In  the  public  schools  neither  music,  art,  nor  industrial 
training  had  any  generally  recognized  place.  It  is  true 
that  as  early  as  1827  my  father  was  instrumental  in 
bringing  Lowell  Mason  back  to  Boston  from  Savannah, 
Georgia,  and  introducing  him  to  Boston  as  a  teacher  of 
music;  true,  also,  that  Lowell  Mason  even  then  con- 
tended that  whoever  could  talk  could  learn  to  sing;  and 
I  have  no  doubt  that  there  was  somewhere  at  the  same 
time  some  one  who  was  insisting  that  it  was  as  easy  to 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  1850  51 

teach  the  average  child  to  express  himself  by  the  pencil 
and  the  brush  as  by  the  pen.  But  these  exceptional  men 
found  few  listeners  and  fewer  followers. 

The  curriculum  of  the  University  of  the  City  of  New 
York  then  represented  the  average  educational  demand 
of  the  age.  It  had  no  musical  department,  no  art  gal- 
lery, no  museum  —  historical,  zoological,  botanical,  eth- 
nological, or  other.  The  name  of  Mr.  S.  F.  B.  Morse 
was  printed  in  the  catalogue  as  Professor  of  the  Litera- 
ture of  the  Art  of  Design,  but  he  had  become  absorbed 
in  his  invention  of  the  telegraph;  I  have  no  recollection 
of  him  as  an  instructor.  The  University  taught  Latin, 
Greek,  mathematics,  mental,  moral,  and  political  philos- 
ophy, and  something  of  the  natural  sciences,  the  last 
exclusively  by  lectures.  There  were  chapel  exercises  in 
oratory,  and  some  instruction  in  rhetoric  and  composi- 
tion. But  I  have  no  recollection  of  any  instruction  in 
English  literature  or  in  modern  or  mediaeval  history. 
French,  Spanish,  Italian,  and  German  professors  were 
announced  in  the  catalogue,  but  I  think  these  languages 
were  extras  and  that  the  professors  were  called  in  from 
outside  when  there  were  any  pupils  for  them  to  teach.  I 
took  one  year  of  German.  I  made  nothing  out  of  it;  but, 
as  no  one  else  made  anything  out  of  it,  I  venture  the 
guess  that  the  failure  was  not  wholly  my  fault.  The 
Greek  department  was  in  a  disorganized  condition  dur- 
ing the  first  three  years  of  my  college  course.  In  the 
fourth  year  the  chair  was  taken  by  Dr.  Howard  Crosby, 
a  great  Greek  scholar  and  a  great  teacher.  But  it  was 
then  too  late  to  lay  foundations  and  impossible  to  build 
a  superstructure  where  no  foundation  had  been  laid. 
It  was  not  too  late,  however,  to  inspire  me  with  an  ad- 
miration for  the  Greek  language  and  the  Greek  litera- 
ture, and  to  give  me  at  least  an  impulse  for  the  study  of 


52  REMINISCENCES 

the  New  Testament  Greek  by  myself,  when  seven  years 
later  I  decided  to  enter  the  ministry.  Dr.  Crosby  became 
not  only  one  of  the  heroes  of  my  boyhood,  but  my  life- 
long friend.  Among  my  cherished  possessions  in  my 
six  volumes  of  autographs  is  the  letter  from  him  offer- 
ing me  in  1877  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity.  If  it 
had  not  been  for  his  letter,  I  think  I  should  have  de- 
clined the  honor.  But  I  had  so  much  respect  for  his 
critical  judgment  and  his  absolute  candor  that  I  ven- 
tured to  hope  that  his  judgment  of  my  scholarship  was 
better  than  my  own. 

If  a  university  is  to  be  measured  by  the  value  of  its 
material  equipment,  the  New  York  University  in  1850 
must  be  regarded  as  a  small  college.  But  this  is  not  the 
true  measure  of  a  university.  The  four  principal  chairs 
in  the  New  York  University  were  occupied  in  1850  by 
great  teachers:  Professors  A.  E.  Johnson,  in  Latin;  Elias 
Loomis,  in  Mathematics;  John  W.  Draper,  in  Chemistry; 
and  C.  S.  Henry,  in  Philosophy. 

Professor  E.  A.  Johnson  thought  in  Latin.  It  was,  I 
then  believed  and  am  now  inclined  to  believe,  a  more 
familiar  tongue  to  him  than  the  English.  Under  his  in- 
struction I  acquired  an  admiration  for  Cicero  as  a  stylist 
which  I  have  never  lost.  It  was  largely  due  to  his  in- 
fluence that  I  acquired  in  college  the  habit  of  reading 
English  authors  for  their  style  as  well  as  for  their  ideas 
—  a  habit  which  has  made  it  a  delight  to  me  to  read 
authors  as  diverse  in  both  thought  and  style  as  Matthew 
Arnold  and  Carlyle,  Ruskin  and  Macaulay,  Burke  and 
John  Stuart  Mill,  simply  to  see  with  what  consummate 
skill  they  use  their  tools.  From  Professor  Loomis  I 
learned  the  principle  that  there  are  axioms  —  in  phi- 
losophy as  in  mathematics  —  which  must  be  assumed  as 
a  basis  of  all  subsequent  demonstration,  and  that  if  a 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  1850  53 

disputant  cannot  understand  or  does  not  accept  the 
axiom  on  which  his  opponent's  argument  is  based,  it  is 
useless  to  continue  the  argument.  Professor  Draper  was 
not  only  a  great  scientist,  but,  as  he  afterward  proved 
by  his  fascinating  history  of  *'The  Intellectual  De- 
velopment of  Europe,"  a  man  of  broad  culture.  Nor 
had  he  the  contempt  which  some  scientists  appear  to 
have  for  the  practical  aspects  of  science.  His  experi- 
ments, following  those  of  Daguerre,  made  the  daguerreo- 
type and  the  photograph  practicable  as  a  method  of 
taking  and  preserving  portraits.  I  have  a  photographer's 
copy  of  the  first  daguerreotype  ever  taken  in  this  coun- 
try. The  sitter  had  to  remain  unmoved  in  bright  sun- 
shine for  an  hour,  while  the  sun  was  with  great  delibera- 
tion drawing  her  portrait.  Professor  Draper  succeeded 
in  accelerating  the  process  so  that  one  or  two  minutes 
sufficed.  I  have  reason  to  realize  the  service  which  he 
rendered  to  the  world,  since  I  have  no  portrait  of  my 
mother  save  a  silhouette,  because  she  died  before  the 
daguerreotype  had  been  brought  into  use.  Professor 
Draper  was  a  brilliant  experimenter,  and  a  singularly 
lucid  lecturer.  If  any  one  could  have  made  a  scientist 
of  me,  he  could.  But  not  even  he  could  perform  miracles. 
The  man  to  whom  I  owe  an  incalculable  debt  of  grati- 
tude was  the  Professor  of  Moral,  Mental,  and  Political 
Philosophy  —  Dr.  C.  S.  Henry.  He  also  gave  us  in- 
struction in  rhetoric  and  oratory,  though  of  that  in- 
struction I  remember  only  two  incidents:  his  counsel, 
"Gentlemen,  never  gesture  with  malice  aforethought," 
a  counsel  which  has  not  made  me  graceful  on  the  plat- 
form, but  has  at  least  kept  me  from  artificiality;  and 
his  satirical  comment  on  the  eloquent  phrase  of  one  of 
my  classmates,  "The  time-worn  face  of  the  heavens,"  a 
comment  which  has  served  to  make  me  dread  finely 


54  REMINISCENCES 

turned  phrases,  which  are  to  an  oration  what  the  scroll- 
saw  work  is  to  the  houses  built  in  San  Francisco  in  the 
middle  of  the  last  century.    He  effectually  silenced  one 

noisy  student  by  the  sharp,  "L ,  be  still,  or  you 

will  rise  from  the  dignity  of  a  nuisance  to  that  of  calam- 
ity." He  was  an  Episcopal  clergyman  and  an  Arminian 
in  his  theology;  and  it  was  related  of  him  that  in  a 
heated  discussion  with  a  Calvinistic  colleague  he  brought 

the  debate  to  a  close  with  "T ,  you  are  as  much 

worse  than  an  atheist  as  a  bad  God  is  worse  than  no 
God  at  all,"  a  phrase  which  has  often  come  back  to  me 
in  reading  an  occasional  sermon  constructed  for  the  pur- 
pose of  frightening  men  into  goodness.  His  sense  of 
reality  and  his  hatred  of  shams  of  all  description  ap- 
pealed strongly  to  us  college  fellows.  There  was  in  my 
brother's  class  a  man  equally  famous  in  the  college 
community  for  his  piety  and  his  laziness.  On  one  occa- 
sion, when  for  the  third  or  fourth  day  in  succession  he 
had  responded  to  Dr.  Henry's  call  with  "Unprepared, 
sir,"  the  Professor  paused  in  the  lesson,  and  something 
like  the  following  colloquy  occurred :  — 

Professor.   You  are  a  member  of  the  Church,  are  n't  you? 
B.   Yes,  sir. 

Professor.   A  member  of  the  Society  of  Inquiry? 
B.   Yes,  sir. 

Professor.   Always  at  church  on  Sunday? 
B.   Yes,  sir. 

Professor.   Always  at  the  class  prayer-meeting? 
B.   Yes,  sir. 

Professor.    Think  yourself  pious,  don't  you? 
B.  {beginning  to  he  alarmed).   I  —  er  —  hope  so,  sir. 
Professor.   Yes!    Well!   I  can  see  through  that  piety;   and 
I  guess  the  Lord 's  as  far-sighted  as  I  am. 

I  am  tempted  to  draw  my  pen  through  these  incidents, 
lest  they  give  the  reader  a  false  impression  of  a  man 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN   1850  55 

whom  I  think  one  of  the  greatest  teachers  I  have  ever 
known.  In  most  colleges  in  1850  the  students  were  fur- 
nished with  a  philosophy  ready  made  which  they  were 
expected  to  accept  and  carry  with  them  into  life.  This 
was  true  even  in  Harvard.  "The  college,"  says  Senator 
Hoar  in  his  "Autobiography,"  "had  rejected  the  old 
Calvinistic  creed  of  New  England  and  substituted  in  its 
stead  the  strict  Unitarianism  of  Dr.  Ware  and  Andrews 
Norton  —  a  creed  in  its  substance  hardly  more  tolerant 
or  liberal  than  that  which  it  had  supplanted."  Uni- 
formly theological  students  were  equipped  in  their 
seminaries  with  a  theology  which  they  were  subsequently 
to  retail  to  their  congregation.  Thus  in  the  Congrega- 
tional denomination  there  was  an  Andover  theology,  a 
New  Windsor  theology,  a  New  Haven  theology,  an 
Oberlin  theology.  Dr.  Henry  was  a  pioneer  in  the  new 
school  of  teaching.  His  object  was  not  to  teach  us  a 
philosophy,  but  to  develop  in  us  power  to  think  philo- 
sophically. He  was  comparatively  indifferent  to  what 
conclusions  we  came,  so  that  the  conclusions  were  our 
own.  In  political  economy  I  never  owned  the  text- 
book, but  I  bought  John  Stuart  Mill's  "Political  Econ- 
omy," and  I  discussed  politico-economic  problems  with 
my  classmates,  my  brothers,  any  one  who  would  discuss 
with  me;  and  I  should  have  stood  at  the  head  of  my  class 
had  I  not  been  asked  one  day  to  give  an  account  of  the 
Bank  of  Scotland,  when  I  did  not  even  know  that  Scot- 
land had  a  bank.  My  zero  that  day  brought  my  stand- 
ing down.  In  mental  philosophy  I  cannot  even  remember 
what  our  textbook  was;  but  I  remember  reading  in 
Hume,  Stewart,  Sir  William  Hamilton,  and  Upham.  To 
know  what  a  textbook  said  counted  for  very  httle  with 
Dr.  Henry ;  how  little  is  indicated  by  his  characterization 
of  one  of  our  textbooks:  "Dr. thinks  he  thinks  a 


56  REMINISCENCES 

great  deal,  but  he  does  not  think  at  all."  To  have  reached 
a  definite  conviction,  to  be  able  to  state  that  conviction 
clearly,  and  to  defend  it  vigorously  against  opposition, 
was  what  he  demanded  of  us.  In  short,  his  object  was 
not  to  give  us  information,  but  to  equip  us  with  power. 
Temperamentally  from  earliest  childhood  disinclined  to 
submit  my  intellect  to  any  authority,  always  willing  to 
listen,  but  always  wishing  to  consider,  weigh,  and  de- 
termine for  myself  what  I  heard,  I  found  in  Dr.  Henry's 
classroom  the  same  joy  which  an  athlete  finds  in  his 
athletics.  Whatever  power  I  have  had  in  my  after  life 
to  think  problems  through  to  a  conclusion,  to  state  with 
clearness  that  conclusion  when  I  have  reached  it,  and 
to  defend  it  against  critics,  I  owe,  so  far  as  I  can  judge, 
first  to  inheritance  and  training  received  from  my  father, 
and  second  to  the  intellectual  discipline  received  in  the 
New  York  University  from  Dr.  Henry. 

In  the  New  York  University  there  was  very  Httle 
college  life.  There  were  compulsory  college  prayers, 
but,  of  course,  no  Sabbath  services,  and  no  religious  or- 
ganization comparable  to  a  college  church.  There  was 
no  effective  attempt  to  regulate  conduct  outside  of  col- 
lege walls.  While  preparing  this  chapter  I  discovered  in 
an  old  catalogue  of  the  University  a  rule  which  forbade 
"frequenting  of  billiard-rooms,  taverns,  and  other  places 
of  corrupting  influences";  but  I  doubt  whether  I  knew 
of  its  existence  when  I  was  in  college,  and  I  am  quite 
sure  that  there  was  no  such  surveillance  as  would  be 
necessary  to  enforce  it.  I  habitually  took  my  meals  in 
restaurants  and  often  in  English  chop  houses,  which 
were  called  "taverns,"  and  which  were  common  in  that 
day,  though  they  have  almost  entirely  disappeared  now. 
And  I  never  suspected  that  I  was  violating  any  rule  by 
so  doing.   We  did  not  know  where  our  professors  lived; 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  1850  57 

that  they  did  not  know  where  we  lived  I  judged  from 
the  fact  that  I  repeatedly  changed  my  residence  dur- 
ing my  four  years  of  college  life,  and  was  never  asked  to 
report  the  change.  We  could  eat  and  drink  and  amuse 
ourselves  as  we  pleased,  so  long  as  we  behaved  ourselves 
with  propriety  in  the  three  or  four  hours  under  the  col- 
lege roof.  And  I  am  quite  sure  that  any  one  of  our  class 
could  have  written  and  published  an  essay  to  prove 
that  Christ  is  a  myth  and  God  a  fable  of  the  poets,  and 
no  one  in  the  Faculty  would  have  called  him  to  account 
for  it,  unless  it  had  been  scandalously  blasphemous. 
Yes!  Dr.  Henry  might  have  called  him  to  account;  but 
it  would  have  been  only  to  make  him  read  his  thesis 
before  the  class  and  defend  it  against  all  objection,  or 
else  acknowledge  it  to  be  indefensible. 

I  do  not  think  there  were  any  optionals  in  the  New 
York  University  except  perhaps  in  modern  languages. 
Everything  else  was  prescribed;  but  neither  were  there 
required  readings,  and  the  prescribed  courses  were  such 
that  a  fairly  studious  pupil  could  fulfill  all  the  obliga- 
tions needed  for  honorable  graduation,  and  still  find 
time  for  optional  courses  of  study  provided  by  him- 
self. I  read  Macaulay's  "History  of  England,"  which 
was  in  course  of  publication  during  my  college  years, 
and  read  it  with  quite  as  much  avidity  as  the  novels 
of  Dickens,  which  were  also  appearing  in  monthly 
numbers.  Macaulay  inspired  me  with  the  desire  to 
know  more  of  English  history,  and  I  read  Hume,  and 
then  Hallam's  "Constitutional  History,"  and  did  a 
little  reading  in  Smollett  and  Clarendon.  At  this  time 
also  I  read  some  of  my  father's  English  histories.  Thus 
I  laid  the  foundation  of  a  knowledge  of  English  history 
which  has  served  me  a  good  purpose  since  in  my  edi- 
torial work,  and,  supplemented  as  it  has  been  by  subse- 


58  REMINISCENCES 

quent  studies,  especially  in  Froude  and  Green,  might 
have  made  me  a  reputable  scholar  in  English  history  if 
I  had  trained  my  memory;  but  in  my  reaction  against 
the  memoriter  methods  pursued  in  the  schools  of  that  day 
I  acquired  an  unfortunate  contempt  for  all  exercises  de- 
signed to  strengthen  the  memory. 

I  also  laid  out  for  myself  a  course  in  theology.  I  de- 
sired to  hold  the  New  England  faith  of  my  ancestors, 
but  I  could  not  and  would  not  accept  their  faith  unless 
I  knew  reasons  which  justified  its  acceptance.  I  had 
come,  not  to  disbelieve,  but  to  doubt  all  the  fundamental 
doctrines  of  Christianity  except  the  immortality  of  the 
individual  and  the  existence  of  God.  I  bought  Bishop 
Pearson's  "Exposition  of  the  Creed,"  and,  with  this  as 
a  guide,  took  up  one  by  one  the  articles  of  the  Apostles' 
Creed  and  made  some  excursions  into  other  books  than 
Pearson,  in  search  for  arguments  to  support  this  primi- 
tive faith  of  the  Christian  Church.  This  study  must 
have  been  somewhat  discursive  and  superficial,  since 
now  I  can  recall  only  one  of  the  books  so  studied  as  pro- 
ducing any  profound  influence.  This  was  Edwards  on 
"The  Freedom  of  the  Will,"  the  study  of  which,  as 
thoughtfully  and  carefully  pursued  as  was  possible  for  a 
boy  not  yet  seventeen  years  of  age,  determined  my 
theological  thinking  from  that  day  to  this. 

It  will  not  be  expected  that  in  a  paragraph  I  should 
attempt  either  to  describe  or  to  discuss  what  is  probably 
the  greatest  contribution  made  to  theological  thought 
by  any  American  scholar;  but  I  may  in  a  paragraph  in- 
timate the  influence  this  work  exerted  upon  my  own 
thought  and  character.  "Edwards  on  the  Freedom  of 
the  Will"  impressed  me  then,  and  impresses  me  now,  as 
the  work  of  a  great  logician  who  dealt  with  philosophy 
of  the  mind  as  he  would  deal  with  a  mathematical 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  1850  59 

problem.  I  could  not  see  that  he  had  made  any  pre- 
liminary study  of  actual  human  experience,  or  any  en- 
deavor to  reduce  his  philosophy  of  human  nature  from 
a  study  of  human  nature  as  it  actually  exists.  The  con- 
clusion which  he  reached  was  for  me  overturned  by  the 
single  sentence  of  Dr.  Johnson  to  Boswell:  "We  know 
that  we  are  free,  and  there's  an  end  on't."  If  I  granted 
Edwards's  premises  that  the  act  of  the  will  is  an  effect, 
I  could  see  no  escape  from  his  conclusion  that  in  the 
will  there  is  no  freedom.  I  denied  Edwards's  premises, 
and  therefore  I  denied  alike  the  conclusion  of  the  me- 
chanical scientist  and  of  the  Calvinistic  theologian. 
How  fully  I  thought  out  at  that  time  my  philosophy  of 
the  will  I  am  not  able  with  certainty  to  state,  but  sub- 
stantially the  conclusion  was  then  reached  on  which  my 
whole  religious  teaching  has  since  been  founded. 

The  act  of  the  will  is  not  an  effect;  it  is  produced  by  no 
cause.  There  is,  and  must  be,  such  a  thing  as  an  original 
cause.  Man's  will  is  an  original  cause;  it  is  itself  un- 
caused. It  is  influenced,  but  not  controlled.  In  this  re- 
spect man  shares  with  his  heavenly  Father  in  what  may 
properly  be  called  creative  power.  The  alternative 
which  Jonathan  Edwards  put  as  a  conclusive  argument 
against  the  self-determining  power  of  the  will  I  ac- 
cepted. The  future  is  not  in  all  its  details  predetermined 
by  God  nor  by  previous  events.  And  as  it  is  not  pre- 
determined, so  neither  is  it  foreknown.  There  is  a  real 
uncertainty  in  life.    What  seems  to  the  average  man  to  \J 

be  true  is  true.  While  the  greatest  and  most  important 
events  in  our  life  are  determined  not  by  us  but  for  us, 
such  as.  Shall  I  be  bom  in  the  first  century  or  in  the 
twentieth  century,  in  Africa  or  in  America,  of  pagan  or 
of  Christian  parents,  there  is  a  certain  range  in  which 
nothing  is  determined  for  me  but  I  am  left  to  make  my 


60  REMINISCENCES 

own  determinations,  as  my  earthly  father  left  me  to  de- 
termine the  question  whether  or  not  I  would  go  to  col- 
lege; and  within  this  range  and  only  within  this  range 
am  I  responsible  for  my  conduct  or  its  consequences. 
Because  of  the  conclusion  thus  early  reached  in  my  life, 
I  accepted  without  hesitation  the  new  school  theology 
of  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher  and  Dr.  Charles  G.  Finney,  and 
later  welcomed  with  enthusiasm  the  philosophic  teach- 
ing of  Henri  Bergson,  who  carried  this  doctrine  a  step 
further,  in  interpreting  God  himself  as  a  Being  of  chang- 
ing will,  though  of  changeless  purpose.  It  is  perhaps  for 
this  reason  that  I  have  been  regarded  with  suspicion 
as  a  heretic  by  my  Calvinistic  and  semi-Calvinistic 
brethren. 

But  to  possess  power  is  useless  unless  one  uses  the 
power  which  he  possesses.  Almost  simultaneously  with 
my  study  of  Edwards  on  "The  Freedom  of  the  Will"  I 
fell  in  with  John  Foster's  essay  on  "Decision  of  Char- 
acter." Physically  feeble,  naturally  timid,  unwilling  to 
take  responsibility,  this  essay  of  less  than  sixty  pages 
inspired  me  to  attempt  a  practical  application  in  my 
own  life  of  the  principle  which  I  had  intellectually  ac- 
quired from  my  study  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  I  set  my- 
self to  attain  the  courage  necessary  to  use  the  creative 
power  with  which  I  believed  God  had  endowed  me.  To 
describe  in  detail  the  process  of  this  self-education  would 
take  me  too  far  from  my  present  purpose  in  this  chapter. 
It  must  sufiBce  to  say  that  it  included  these  steps:  A 
conviction  that  I  could  not,  if  I  would,  throw  off  upon 
others  the  responsibility  for  my  own  choice;  that  I  might 
wisely  take  counsel  from  others  for  my  conscience,  but 
I  could  not  rightly  submit  my  conscience  to  the  control 
of  others;  that  every  man  must  give  account  of  himself 
to  God,  not  only  in  a  final  day  of  judgment,  but  every 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  1850  61 

day  and  for  every  voluntary  act  of  his  life;  that  when 
questions  were  presented  they  must  therefore  be  care- 
fully considered,  the  pros  and  cons  carefully  weighed, 
as  a  court  of  final  appeal  would  weigh  the  pros  and  cons 
of  a  case  submitted  to  it,  but  that  when  a  decision  was 
reached  there  must  be  no  reconsideration  of  the  ques- 
tion unless  new  facts  before  unknown  are  presented  to 
the  mind.  Every  real  decision  must  be  affinal  decision 
and  must  not  be  made  until  the  individual  is  willing  it 
should  be  final;  that  though  evils  may  result  from  an 
erroneous  decision,  no  decision  is  quite  so  bad  as  in- 
decision, no  mistaken  course  of  conduct  quite  so  in- 
jurious as  infirmity  of  will  and  vacillation  of  purpose. 

More  important  in  its  effect  upon  my  character  than 
any  book  I  read  or  any  single  teacher  in  the  University 
was  the  influence  of  my  two  older  brothers,  Benjamin 
Vaughan  and  Austin,  and  it  was  all  the  more  important 
because  neither  were  they  conscious  of  exerting  it  nor 
was  I  conscious  of  being  affected  by  it.  They  were  my 
comrades  from  the  day  of  my  entrance  on  college  life 
in  1849  to  the  day  of  my  leaving  their  oflSce  for  the 
ministry  in  1859,  nor  did  their  comradeship  cease  then. 
It  was  interrupted  by  my  five  years'  absence  in  the 
West;  but  when  I  returned  to  the  East  and  became  the 
pastor  of  a  little,  struggling  Congregational  church  in 
New  York  City,  they  cast  in  their  lot  with  mine  and  did 
all  that  brothers  could  do  to  make  my  pastorate  a  suc- 
cess. My  brother  Austin  left  the  Broadway  Tabernacle 
to  become  a  deacon  in  the  new  church  enterprise;  my 
brother  Vaughan  left  Plymouth  Church  to  organize  and 
lead  the  choir.  When  the  church  enterprise  failed  and  I 
retreated  from  the  city  to  Cornwall  to  devote  myself  to 
literary  work,  their  comradeship  did  not  cease.  And 
when  I  returned,  seventeen  years  later,  to  take  the  pas- 


62  REMINISCENCES 

torate  of  Plymouth  Church,  in  Brooklyn,  it  was  through 
my  brother  Vaughan's  suggestion,  or  that  of  his  wife,  I 
am  not  sure  which,  that  I  was  invited  to  supply  that 
historic  pulpit,  and  as  long  as  his  health  continued  he 
and  his  family  were  my  loyal  supporters  and  wise  coun- 
selors. This  comradeship  ended  only  with  the  death  of 
my  brothers  —  of  Benjamin  Vaughan  in  1890  and  of 
Austin  in  1896. 

My  brother  Austin,  four  years  my  senior,  acted  as  my 
guardian  in  college.  He  had  a  good  business  head  — 
poise,  caution,  thrift,  and  a  good  sense  of  proportion. 
Thanks  to  him,  I  never  overran  my  allowance.  Later 
he  became  my  father's  business  agent  in  dealing  with 
publishers,  and  after  my  father's  death  he  was  found  to 
be  the  executor  of  his  will.  He  must  have  had  tact,  for 
it  is  not  easy  for  an  older  brother  to  act  in  loco  parentis 
to  a  younger  brother,  and  yet  I  cannot  remember  that 
there  was  ever  any  disagreement  between  us,  and  I  was 
not  wholly  lacking  in  independence  of  spirit  nor  always 
placid  in  temper. 

When  my  brother  Austin  graduated,  he  hesitated  be- 
tween making  law  or  music  his  profession,  and  music 
always  remained  with  him  as  an  avocation.  He  carried 
his  scholarly  tastes  into  the  law,  became  widely  known 
for  his  legal  scholarship,  was  a  lawyer's  lawyer,  con- 
sulted by  his  professional  brethren  in  difficult  legal 
problems,  and  often  prepared  briefs  for  them,  though  he 
rarely  argued  cases  in  court  himself.  In  the  celebrated 
Beecher  trial  he  was  one  of  the  counsel,  and  his  orderly 
mind  enabled  him  to  keep  the  testimony  so  indexed 
and  cross-indexed  that  at  any  moment  in  the  trial  Mr. 
Evarts,  the  senior  counsel,  could  lay  his  hand  on  any 
testimony  of  any  witness  or  any  ruling  of  the  judge  on 
any  topic  without  material  delay  in  the  proceedings. 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN   1850  63 

This  index  enabled  me  afterward  to  prepare  a  pamphlet 
on  "The  Uncontradicted  Testimony  in  the  Beecher 
Case"  and  to  write  a  two-page  article  for  "Harper's 
Weekly"  on  the  case,  both  of  which  publications  I  have 
reason  for  thinking  rendered  some  service  in  clearing 
away  the  suspicion  which  the  disagreement  of  the  jury 
in  that  case  left  in  the  public  mind. 

He  was  Dean  of  the  New  York  University  Law  School, 
which  indeed  he  created  or  re-created,  I  am  not  sure 
which.  His  law  books  acquired  a  National  reputation 
and  are  still  in  demand.  Up  to  the  day  of  his  death  he 
was  to  me  both  friend  and  counselor.  When  I  needed  to 
borrow  money  on  a  mortgage  to  build  my  house,  it  was 
he  who  secured  it  for  me;  it  was  he  who  made  to  me  a 
wise  suggestion  that  most  people  do  not  wish  to  hear 
two  sermons  on  a  Sunday,  but  that  there  are  many  who 
wish  information  on  religious  subjects,  a  suggestion 
which  led  me  to  give  in  Plymouth  Church  the  course 
of  Sunday  Evening  Lectures  which  were  afterwards 
rewritten  in  the  five  volumes,  "  The  Evolution  of  Chris- 
tianity," "The  Theology  of  an  Evolutionist,"  "Chris-  J 
tianity  and  Social  Problems,"  "The  Life  and  Literature 
of  the  Ancient  Hebrews,"  and  "The  Life  and  Letters  of 
Paul,"  and  which  on  Sunday  evenings  changed  a  con- 
gregation which  prior  to  these  courses  filled  hardly  more 
than  a  third  of  the  church  into  congregations  which 
crowded  it  to  the  doors.  In  my  editorial  work  I  con- 
stantly consulted  him  on  the  legal  aspects  of  public 
questions,  and  his  professional  counsels  gave  to  The 
Outlook,  then  the  "Christian  Union,"  a  standing  on 
such  questions  with  the  legal  fraternity  which  lay 
journals  rarely  attain. 

My  brother  Vaughan  was  of  a  very  different  tempera- 
ment.  He  was  an  original,  and  had  that  spontaneity  of 


64  REMINISCENCES 

intellectual  life  which  we  are  accustomed  to  regard  as 
one  of  the  characteristics  of  genius.  He  was  less  a 
scholar  and  more  a  creator  than  my  brother  Austin. 
He  had  no  mind  for  the  hair-splitting  which  is  supposed 
in  some  quarters  to  be  the  characteristic  of  a  success- 
ful lawyer,  and  no  great  reverence  for  mere  tradition, 
which  is  supposed  in  other  quarters  to  constitute  legal 
ability.  But  beneath  the  confusing  currents  and  cross- 
currents of  thought  which  characterize  most  contro- 
versies he  had  the  power  to  see  clearly  the  really  funda- 
mental principles  involved.  In  this  respect  his  mind 
seemed  to  me  Websterian  in  its  character.  Some  illus- 
trations of  this  ability  will  be  indicated  in  the  next 
chapter.  Perhaps  it  is  a  brother's  partiality,  but  I  think 
he  might  have  made  a  notable  success  in  the  argument 
of  great  questions  before  the  Court  of  Appeals  or  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.  But  he  had  no 
interest  in  the  details  which  must  be  mastered  in  the 
trial  of  causes  in  the  court  below,  and  personal  contro- 
versy of  any  description  was  his  pet  aversion.  He  could 
not  even  play  games  with  any  pleasure,  because  the 
contest  of  skill  with  an  opponent,  which  is  an  essential 
element  of  interest  in  all  games,  was  distasteful  to  him; 
he  was  equally  unwilling  to  beat  or  to  be  beaten. 

When  I  left  the  firm  of  Abbott  Brothers,  in  1859,  he 
had  no  inclination  to  find  another  to  take  my  place,  and 
gave  up  the  practice  of  law  for  law  editorship  and  au- 
thorship. A  growing  impairment  of  his  hearing  would 
perhaps  have  necessitated  his  abandonment  of  court 
practice  even  if  I  had  remained  his  partner.  It  made  his 
naturally  sensitive  soul  supersensitive,  drove  him  from 
the  bar  and  from  the  social  circle,  and  made  the  later 
years  of  his  life  years  of  comparative  isolation.  But  this 
did  not  check  his  interest  in  human  questions;  his  spirit 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  1850  65 

of  comradesliip  remained  after  his  power  to  give  it  ex- 
pression had  waned,  and  his  exuberant  humor,  which 
would  have  made  him  a  successful  contributor  to  an 
American  "Punch"  if  there  had  been  any  American 
"Punch"  to  contribute  to,  failed  only  with  his  failing 
health.  From  his  unpublished  writings,  some  of  which 
have  been  kept  as  a  memorial,  I  select  one  here  to 
illustrate  this  phase  of  his  character.  My  brother  Ed- 
ward had  complained  that  Vaughan  had  not  written  to 
him.  In  reply  he  wrote  four  defenses  in  different  literary 
forms,  one  of  them  in  the  form  of  a  sermon. 

[Old  fashioned  sermon  style.] 
Text.  2  Ep.  John,  12. 

Having  many  things  to  write  unto  you,  I  would  not  write  with 
paper  and  ink;  but  I  trust  to  come  unto  you  and  speak  face  to 
face. 

Firstly,  my  hearers,  this  passage  teaches  the  wrongfulness 
of  the  worldly  practice  of  writing  letters.  Our  text  divides 
into  three  heads:  1.  The  temptation  to  write  letters  —  "hav- 
ing many  things  to  write."  2.  The  resolve  not  to  write  —  "I 
would  not  write  with  paper  and  ink."  3.  The  true  substitute, 
viz.,  a  personal  visit  —  "I  trust  to  come  unto  you." 

Secondly.  The  Gospel,  my  hearers,  explicitly  forbids  the 
disciples  to  write  letters;  even  to  a  brother.  In  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  it  is  said,  "Leave  thy  gift  before  the  altar,  and  Go 
be  reconciled  to  thy  brother."  (Matt.  v.  24.)  And  again  we 
are  told :  "  If  thy  brother  trespass  against  thee,  Go  and  tell  him 
his  fault."  (Matt,  xviii,  15.)  Neither  to  avoid  interrupting  the 
temple  services  (in  the  first  passage)  nor  when  (in  the  second) 
anticipation  of  controversy  seems  to  make  a  written  record  de- 
sirable, is  it  permitted  to  communicate  with  a  brother  by  letter. 
One  m,iist  go  and  speak  in  person. 

Thirdly.  The  negative  argument  from  the  gospels,  my  dear 
hearers,  sustains  this  view.  It  is  not  recorded  that  Jesus  ever 
wrote  a  letter.  He  often  and  sternly  denounced  the  Scribes. 
No  word  of  his  can  be  wrested  into  an  encouragement  of  corre- 
spondence by  mail,  or  a  concession  that  a  postal  service  could 


66  REMINISCENCES 

exist,  under  the  Gospel  dispensation.  Not  one  word  of  aid  or 
counsel  did  he  ever  address  to  postmasters  or  letter-carriers. 

Fourthly.  The  practice  of  apostolic  times,  my  friends,  sus- 
tains our  exposition.  The  apostles  wrote  no  letters.  They  wrote 
epistles:  but  never  letters.  At  the  council  of  Jerusalem,  while 
they  did  indeed  reduce  their  views  to  writing,  they  sent  Judas 
and  Silas  to  communicate  those  views  orally.  (Acts  xv.  27.) 
When  Paul  was  arrested  at  Jerusalem,  the  chief  captain  Lysias 
wrote  a  letter  to  Felix  delineating  the  case;  but  Paul  went  in 
person  to  make  his  defense.  (Acts  xxiv.  10.)  The  passage  "  Ye 
see  how  large  a  letter  I  have  written  unto  you"  is  doubtless  a 
mistranslation;  for  Paul  elsewhere  (II  Cor.  x.  9,  10)  declares 
he  "would  not  terrify  you  by  letters";  and  repudiates  the  as- 
persion that  "his  letters  truly  are  weighty  and  powerful." 
John,  indeed,  in  the  Revelation  was  told  to  write  to  the  Angels 
of  the  Seven  Churches;  but  observe,  1.  He  was  told  to  write 
in  a  book.  (Rev.  i.  11.)  2.  Being  angels,  a  personal  visit  was 
impossible.  3.  This  was  an  exceptional  divine  command  and 
affords  no  rule  for  ordinary  conduct. 

Fifthly.  During  the  early  centuries  of  the  Christian  Church, 
letters,  as  is  well  known,  were  almost  abandoned.  It  was  not 
until  modern  times  that  the  practice  was  renewed,  and  what  is 
kno^vTi  as  the  Revival  of  Letters  took  place. 

Sixthly.  We  will  continue  this  subject,  my  dear  hearers,  this 
afternoon,  with  a  few  words  of  personal  apphcation. 

My  brother  Austin  inspired  in  me  the  desire  to  have 
an  orderly  mind  and  to  carry  order  and  system  into  my 
life's  work.  My  brother  Vaughan  inspired  me  with  the 
desire  to  see  in  all  controversies  what  is  the  real  and 
fundamental  question  at  issue,  and  not  to  take  life  so 
seriously  as  to  incapacitate  me  from  relieving  the  tensity 
of  some  situations  and  the  irritation  of  others  by  an 
appreciation  of  its  essential  humor. 

I  had  not  the  same  comradeship  with  my  brother 
Edward.  He  was  six  years  my  junior.  While  I  was  in 
college  he  was  away  at  boarding-school,  or  with  our 
Aunt  Sallucia,  who  was  as  a  foster  mother  to  him.   We 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN   1850  67 

met  only  in  vacations.  After  he  graduated  from  the 
New  York  University,  in  1860,  he  went  to  Andover 
Theological  Seminary,  and,  after  the  usual  three  years' 
course,  took  up  his  residence  in  Cambridge,  Massachu- 
setts, first  as  a  Congregational  pastor,  afterwards  as  an 
Episcopal  rector,  while  I  lived  always  in  New  York. 
As  he  was  an  Episcopalian  and  I  was  a  Congregation- 
alist,  we  never  met  at  ecclesiastical  gatherings.  Tem- 
peramentally we  were  very  dissimilar.  He  was  inter- 
ested in  the  past,  I  in  the  future;  he  in  what  had  been 
done,  I  in  what  remained  to  do;  he  was  naturally  con- 
servative, I  naturally  progressive;  he  was  a  Church- 
man, I  was  independent  even  for  a  Congregationalist. 
He  once  said  to  me,  "There  is  nothing  so  glorious  as 
preaching  the  Gospel,  except  administering  the  sacra- 
ments." I  am  so  much  of  a  Quaker  that,  while  I  appre- 
ciate the  value  of  the  sacraments  to  the  great  majority 
of  worshipers,  they  appeal  to  me  as  an  expression  of 
spiritual  experience  less  than  prayer  and  praise  and  in- 
struction, and  I  value  them  rather  for  the  good  they  do 
to  others  than  for  any  direct  spiritual  benefit  which  I 
am  conscious  of  receiving  from  them  myself. 

Yet  in  writing  these  reminiscences  I  count  myself  to 
be  writing  in  partnership  with  my  brother  Edward. 
For  I  have  been  peculiarly  dependent,  especially  in  the 
preparation  of  these  earlier  chapters,  on  the  collection 
of  books,  manuscripts,  and  papers  relating  to  the  Abbott 
family  which  he  made  during  the  later  years  of  his  life 
and  gave  to  Bowdoin  College  shortly  before  his  death. 
So  that,  while  I  am  not  conscious  of  having  been  greatly 
influenced  in  my  life  by  him,  he  has  greatly  aided  me  in 
writing  this  account  of  that  life. 

This  chapter  on  my  college  education  would  not  be 
complete  without  supplementing  it  by  a  reference  to 


68  REMINISCENCES 

two  men  whose  influence  exercised  a  profound  influence 
on  my  character. 

On  account  of  my  health  I  was  under  the  necessity  of 
frequent  consultation  with  Dr.  Willard  Parker.  He  was 
an  earnest  Christian  man  and  as  much  interested  in 
preserving  health  as  in  curing  disease.  He  was  in  this 
respect  in  advance  of  his  times.  He  impressed  me  with 
the  truth  that  the  laws  of  health  are  as  much  the  laws 
of  God  as  are  the  Ten  Commandments,  and  that  it  is  as 
truly  a  sin  to  violate  the  laws  of  health  as  to  violate  the 
Ten  Commandments.  He  enlisted  my  conscience  on  the 
side  of  my  physical  well-being,  and  made  food,  rest,  ex- 
ercise, and  bathing  as  sacred  a  duty  as  reading  the  Bible, 
going  to  church,  and  prayer.  Next  to  the  watchful  care 
of  my  wife  I  owe  it  to  Dr.  Willard  Parker  that  at  seventy- 
eight  years  of  age,  though  without  the  physical  enthu- 
siasm and  elasticity  of  youth,  I  am  in  better  health  than 
I  was  at  seventeen. 

The  influence  on  my  spirit  exercised  by  Dr.  Stephen 
H.  Tyng  was  scarcely  less  than  the  influence  exerted  on 
my  health  by  Dr.  Willard  Parker  and  on  my  intellec- 
tual power  by  Dr.  Henry.  Except  for  occasional  ser- 
mons I  had  never  heard  preaching  which  inspired  in  me 
any  life  until  I  came  to  New  York.  It  is  perhaps  the 
recollection  of  this  fact  that  makes  me  less  inclined  to 
condemn  non-churchgoers  than  I  otherwise  should  be. 
By  what  chance  I  happened  in  at  St.  George's  Church 
the  first  year  I  was  in  New  York  I  do  not  know.  Dr. 
Tyng  was  preaching  a  series  of  sermons  to  young  men 
on  the  life  of  David.  From  my  subsequent  reading  of 
his  life  and  of  a  volume  of  his  sermons  I  judge  that  this 
particular  series  was  not  characterized  by  any  extra- 
ordinary Biblical  scholarship,  and  certainly  not  by  any 
theological  novelty,  but  it  was  characterized  by  what 


AN  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN   1850  69 

was  to  me  a  very  novel  realism.  Dr.  Tyng  himself  was, 
every  inch  of  him,  a  soldier  —  brave,  chivalric,  confi- 
dent in  his  faith,  vigorous  in  his  physical,  mental,  and 
spiritual  life.  I  found  my  mother's  English  Prayer- 
Book,  and  began  to  attend  St.  George's  regularly,  first 
enduring  the  service  for  the  sake  of  the  sermon,  then 
learning  to  love  it  for  its  literary  and  spiritual  beauty. 
I  had  always  thought  of  religion  as  obedience  to  a  moral 
law.  Dr.  Tyng  first  inspired  me  with  the  experience 
which  later  developed  into  a  philosophy  that  religion  is 
a  spontaneous  life.  I  desired  to  have  the  kind  of  courage, 
of  spiritual  devotion,  of  sorrow  for  sin,  of  resolute  pur- 
pose in  amendment,  of  companionship  with  God,  which 
Dr.  Tyng  expressed  in  his  interpretation  of  David's 
life. 

The  text  of  one  of  his  sermons  to  young  men,  one  not 
in  the  series  on  David,  has  remained  with  me  through- 
out my  life,  though  the  sermon  itself  has  long  since  been 
forgotten.  It  was  an  evening  sermon  to  young  men. 
His  text  was,  "Run,  speak  to  that  young  man."  Who 
the  young  man  was  and  why  the  prophet  should  speak 
to  him  I  do  not  recall,  nor  do  I  remember  anything 
whatever  about  the  sermon.  I  remember  only  the  im- 
portance of  "getting  busy,"  of  moving  quickly,  of 
throwing  off  apathy,  indifference,  hesitation,  delay,  if 
I  would  accomplish  anything  in  life.  I  have  confronted 
myself  many  times  in  my  preaching  by  recalling  that 
incident,  and  by  the  hope  that  the  influence  of  a  text 
and  of  the  personal  influence  of  the  preacher  who  pro- 
nounced it  may  survive  in  the  life  of  some  auditor  long 
after  the  sermon  is  forgotten.  I  remember  one  notable 
call  on  Dr.  Tyng  in  his  study.  On  the  walls  were  hang- 
ing the  portraits  of  men  eminent  in  the  past.  I  looked  at 
them  with  interest.   "These,"  he  said,  "are  my  friends. 


70  REMINISCENCES 

I  consult  with  them  when  diflSculties  arise.  I  get  in- 
spiration to  my  faith  from  them  when  doubts  darken 
my  path,  and  to  courage  when  dangers  confront  me." 
Among  them  was  a  portrait  of  John  Calvin.  He  an- 
swered my  inquiring  look.  "Yes,"  he  said,  "I  am  a 
Calvinist  for  the  same  reason  that  the  old  woman  in  the 
poorhouse  was  a  Calvinist.  When  Wesleyanism  was  an 
innovation  and  Wesley  came  that  way  and  preached  a 
sermon,  and  her  companions  asked  her  after  the  service 
what  she  thought  of  it,  'Not  much,'  she  replied.  'I  know 
that  God  chose  me  before  he  saw  me,  for  he  never  would 
have  chosen  me  arterward.' "  I  wonder  if  a  chief  value 
of  Calvinism  is  not  that  it  promotes  this  spirit  of 
humility. 

One  other  incident,  insignificant  in  itself,  but  signifi- 
cant upon  my  life,  remains  to  be  mentioned  in  summing 
up  this  educational  period.  Aided  by  some  instruction 
from  my  brother  Vaughan,  I  had  taught  myself  to  play 
the  organ  and  to  read  simple  church  music.  In  my  senior 
year  I  added  a  little  to  my  income  by  playing  in  an 
Episcopal  church  in  one  of  the  suburbs  of  New  York 
City.  I  went  out  on  Saturday  afternoon,  played  at  the 
rehearsal,  remained  over  the  Sabbath,  and  returned  to 
my  college  work  on  Monday  morning.  During  the  Sab- 
bath I  was  the  guest  of  the  rector.  I  was  just  at  that 
age  when  a  young  man  is  prepared  to  discuss  any  theme 
with  any  person,  and  I  had  many  a  debate  with  the 
rector  on  theological  and  ecclesiastical  questions.  I  had 
not  yet  united  with  the  Church,  and  was  seriously 
thinking  of  uniting  with  the  Episcopal  Church,  although 
it  would  involve  a  seeming  departure  from  the  Puritan 
faith  of  my  fathers.  In  the  discussion  with  the  rector, 
who  stood  stoutly  for  the  apostolical  succession,  he  told 
me  that  my  father  and  uncles  had  sinned  in  preaching 


AN  AMERICAN   COLLEGE   IN   1850  71 

the  Gospel  without  apostolical  ordination,  but  would 
be  forgiven  because  they  had  done  so  in  ignorance. 
That  determined  for  me  that  the  Episcopal  Church 
could  not  be  my  home,  and  in  the  spring  of  that  year  I 
united  with  the  Presbyterian  church  which  my  father 
and  my  Uncle  Gorham  attended.  I  then  supposed  the 
rector  represented  the  doctrine  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 
I  have  since  learned  that  he  represented  the  doctrine 
only  of  a  party  in  that  Church  —  a  doctrine  which,  in 
my  mature  judgment,  accords  neither  with  its  traditions 
nor  its  standards,  nor  with  the  teaching  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament, on  which  both  are  supposed  to  be  founded. 

My  two  brothers  had  graduated  from  the  New  York 
University  and  had  entered  the  practice  of  law.  My 
brother  Vaughan  had  a  vision  of  a  firm  of  Abbott 
Brothers,  in  which  the  different  functions  of  the  lawyer 
should  be  portioned  out  between  us  three.  This  vision 
appealed  to  my  imagination  and  to  my  ambition.  My 
boyhood  dreams  of  the  ministry  disappeared,  and  on 
my  graduation  in  1853  I  followed  my  brothers  into  the 
law. 


CHAPTER  IV 

LOVE   AND   LAW 

THE  summer  of  1852  was  remarkable  in  my  life 
as  the  "cousin  summer."    To  explain  the  meaning 
of  the  phrase  and  the  significance  of  the  event  a 
brief  excursion  into  the  family  genealogy  is  necessary. 

George  Abbott  migrated  from  England  to  this  coun- 
try about  1640  and  settled  in  Andover,  and  is  known  in 
our  family  history  as  George  Abbott  of  Andover,  which 
distinguishes  him  from  another  George  Abbott  who 
migrated  about  the  same  time  and  settled  in  Rowley, 
and  is  known  as  George  Abbott  of  Rowley.  Whether 
they  were  relatives  is  not  known.  Our  family  descended 
from  George  Abbott  of  Andover.  Among  his  descendants 
in  the  fifth  generation  were  Jacob  Abbott  second,  who 
married  Betsey  Abbott,  his  second  cousin;  their  eldest 
son  was  Jacob  Abbott  third,  who  was  my  father.  My 
grandmother's  sister,  Sarah  Abbott,  married  Gorham 
Dummer,  whose  granddaughter,  Ellen  Gilman,  married 
my  brother  Austin.  My  grandfather's  sister,  Phoebe 
Abbott,  married  Benjamin  Abbott,  a  distant  cousin. 
One  of  their  daughters,  Lydia  Abbott,  married  John 
Titcomb,  whose  eldest  daughter,  Elizabeth,  married 
my  brother  Vaughan.  Another  daughter,  Abigail  Abbott, 
married  Hannibal  Hamlin,  whose  daughter  Abby  be- 
came my  wife.  Thus,  of  the  four  Abbott  brothers  of  my 
generation,  three  married  second  cousins;  my  grand- 
father and  grandmother  were  second  cousins;  the  grand- 


LOVE  AND  LAW  73 

father  and  grandmother  of  my  wife  and  of  my  brother 
Vaughan's  wife  were  distant  cousins;  and  their  great- 
grandfather and  great-grandmother  were  second  cousins. 
This  intermarriage  was,  I  suspect,  characteristic  not  of 
the  Abbott  family,  but  of  the  sparse  population  of  Maine 
in  the  eighteenth  and  early  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. The  change  which  changed  conditions  in  America 
have  produced  since  1850  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
in  the  veins  of  my  grandchildren,  through  marriage, 
there  flows  Huguenot,  German,  Russian,  French,  Swiss, 
Irish,  and  English  blood. 

My  brother  Vaughan  graduated  in  1850,  spent  a  year 
at  the  Harvard  Law  School,  and  was  admitted  to  the 
bar  in  1851;  my  brother  Austin  graduated  in  1851,  and 
after  a  year  spent  in  study  of  the  law  was  admitted  to 
the  bar  in  1852.  I  was  that  year  still  in  the  University, 
having  one  more  year  to  complete  my  college  course. 
My  father  had  under  consideration  a  plan  for  providing 
for  himself  and  his  sisters  a  home  nearer  New  York  than 
Farmington.  How  far  it  was  his  plan,  how  far  it  was 
my  Aunt  Sallucia's  plan,  to  which  he  characteristically 
yielded  that  he  might  dissuade  her  from  it,  I  do  not 
know.  He  leased  Fewacres  for  the  summer  to  Mr.  John 
Titcomb,  and  took  my  aunts  to  New  York  to  investigate 
its  suburbs.  The  result  was  that  they  found  nothing 
which  suited  them  as  well  as  the  homestead  at  Farming- 
ton,  to  which  in  the  fall  they  returned,  quite  content  to 
spend  there  the  rest  of  their  lives.  Meanwhile  I  spent 
the  entire  summer  at  Fewacres  with  the  Titcomb  family, 
which  included  Elizabeth,  Mary,  and  Charles,  all  of 
whom  were  engaged  in  teaching,  and  had  therefore  the 
summer  for  vacation.  An  older  brother,  John,  was  in 
business,  and  therefore  at  Fewacres  only  for  a  week  or 
two  —  possibly  not  at  all.    My  second  cousin  Abby 


74  REMINISCENCES 

Hamlin  was  invited  to  spend  the  summer  with  the  Tit- 
combs,  and  did  so.  My  brother  Vaughan,  who  had 
already  commenced  his  professional  work  in  New  York, 
was  at  Fewacres  only  for  a  brief  respite  from  his  work. 
There  came  from  him,  however,  a  very  fat  weekly  letter 
addressed  to  my  cousin  Abby.  Though  I  had  at  that 
time  no  right  to  be  jealous,  this  fact  might  nevertheless 
have  caused  a  little  jealousy  in  me  had  I  not  surmised 
(for  my  cousin  Abby  kept  the  secret  to  herself)  that 
they  were  passed  over  unopened  to  my  cousin  Lizzie. 
How  this  care-free  summer  was  spent  I  can  best  indi- 
cate by  the  following  boyish  extract  from  my  first  letter 
to  my  cousin  Abby,  written  in  the  fall  after  we  had 
separated  and  gone  to  our  several  vocations  and  our 
several  homes :  — 

New  York,  October  9,  1852. 

I  can't  help  thinking  what  a  good  time  we  had  down  in 
Farmington  this  summer.  At  least  Austin  and  I  did.  First  I 
am  at  Old  Blue  eating  luncheon,  with  a  good  appetite,  and  I 
can  see  Webb's  pond  and  the  houses  about  on  the  shore  as 
plain  as  I  could  then,  and  then  I  am  on  the  hill  the  other  side 
of  the  mill  eating  raspberries,  while  Austin  has  a  horse  that 
won't  stand  still  and  that  he  has  to  keep  hulloaing  whoa!  to, 
to  keep  from  coming  to  pick  raspberries  too,  and  then  all  five 
of  us  are  in  one  wagon  riding  along  on  the  Norton  Flats,  and 
Austin  and  Charles  are  hanging  affectionately  but  uncom- 
fortably about  my  neck,  and  then  we  are  all  in  the  parlor  to- 
gether in  the  very  depths  of  Dickens,  and  then  we  are  on  the 
top  of  the  Bakehouse  hill  looking  at  the  village  before  sunrise, 
and  then  —  but  if  I  were  to  endeavor  to  relate  all  the  good 
times  we  had  in  Farmington  it  would  be  necessary  to  keep  a 
journal  of  every  day  of  the  summer. 

This  letter  was  followed  by  others.  The  correspond- 
ence, at  first  desultory,  with  intervals  of  months  be- 
tween the  letters,  grew  into  an  agreeable  habit,  with 
fortnightly  letters,  which  grew  after  our  engagement 


MRS.   LYMAN    ABBOTT   AT   SIXTEEN 


LOVE  AND  LAW  75 

into  weekly  letters,  and  after  our  marriage,  whenever 
we  were  separated,  into  daily  letters.  How  she  did  it  I 
do  not  know,  but  though  after  our  marriage  we  had  six 
homes  before  we  finally  settled  in  1870  in  our  permanent 
home  in  Cornwall-on-Hudson,  my  wife  managed  to  save 
every  letter  she  ever  received  and  every  letter  I  ever  re- 
ceived, in  so  far  as  they  were  in  her  keeping.  My  remi- 
niscences are  in  large  measure  corrected  or  confirmed  by 
what  these  letters  contain.  But  for  her  painstaking 
these  chapters  could  never  have  been  written. 

But,  what  is  far  more  important,  the  life  which  it 
records  could  never  have  been  lived.  For  the  fifty  years 
of  our  united  life  she  was  the  best  part  of  me.  The  cares 
of  the  household  which  in  most  families  are  assumed  by 
the  husband  she  took  from  me.  When  I  was  asked, 
"Are  you  boarding  or  keeping  house .f*"  I  was  accus- 
tomed to  reply,  "My  wife  keeps  house  and  I  board  with 
her."  When  my  workshop  was  in  my  home,  we  agreed 
that  during  my  working  hours  she  would  bring  no  prob- 
lem to  me  unless  it  was  of  such  immediate  importance 
that  if  I  had  been  a  merchant  she  would  summon  me 
from  my  store  or  office  to  deal  with  it.  She  was  eager 
for  children;  welcomed  them  when  they  came;  and  never 
turned  them  over  to  a  nursery-maid  to  mother  them, 
though  when  our  means  were  adequate  she  used  a 
nursery-maid  to  supplement  her  own  mothering.  She 
made  an  amateur's  study  of  medicine,  became  an  un- 
professional nurse  before  the  days  of  the  professional 
nurse,  and  when  sickness  came  dropped  every  other 
engagement  to  devote  herself  to  the  patient.  She  never 
imagined  herself  a  substitute  for  the  doctor,  but  called 
him  at  the  first  warning  and  worked  loyally  under  him 
when  he  came. 

When  I  was  a  lawyer,  she  helped  me  with  my  briefs. 


76  REMINISCENCES 

and  I  tried  on  her  beforehand  the  arguments  with  which 
I  hoped  to  convince  the  court  or  the  jury,  and  by  her 
shrewd  comments  discovered  their  weak  spots.  When 
I  was  in  the  ministry,  she  was  co-pastor,  and  by  her 
tact  saved  me  from  many  an  entanglement  which  my 
absent-mindedness  would  have  caused.  When  I  was 
editor,  she  was  my  keenest  critic.  How  often  has  she 
stopped  me  at  the  close  of  a  paragraph  and  asked  me, 
"Exactly  what  do  you  mean  by  that. J*"  and  when  I  had 
explained  its  meaning,  responded  cheerfully,  *'Why  not 
put  it  that  way  for  common  folks  like  me?"  I  am  often 
told  that  my  style  is  notable  for  its  clearness.  If  that 
is  the  case,  the  fact  is  largely  due  to  what  I  inherited 
from  my  father  and  learned  from  my  wife.  How  many 
of  my  books  have  been  a  joint  product,  not  in  formal 
composition  but  in  preparatory  thought,  neither  I  nor 
she  could  have  told. 

Macaulay  in  a  characteristic  antithesis  notes  the  dis- 
tinction between  those  who  are  temperamentally  drawn 
in  opposite  directions,  one  by  the  charm  of  habit,  the 
other  by  the  charm  of  novelty  —  the  conservative  and 
the  radical.  My  wife's  conservatism  tempered  my  radi- 
calism, and  to  my  reverence  both  for  her  sentiments  and 
for  her  judgment  I  owe  the  fact  that  I  have  been  able 
to  move  forward  with  a  progressive  age  without  disre- 
spect for  or  embittered  conflict  with  the  men  and  women 
of  more  conservative  temper.  In  times  of  success  her  am- 
bition for  her  husband,  always  outrunning  his  achieve- 
ment, has  served  to  temper  if  not  wholly  to  prevent  my 
self-conceit.  In  time  of  failure,  when  I  have  wholly  lost 
faith  in  myself,  she  never  lost  faith  in  me,  and  her  courage 
forbade  my  discouragement.  She  died  in  Germany  in 
1907,  six  weeks  before  a  golden  anniversary  would  have 
been  celebrated.    Her  dust  reposes  in  the  well-ordered 


LOVE  AND  LAW  77 

cemetery  at  Hildesheim,  shaded  by  the  trees  and  cov- 
ered with  the  carefully  tended  flowers  which  she  loved 
so  well.  The  monument  we  have  chosen  for  her  in  this 
country  is  a  cut-leaf  maple,  planted  on  our  golden- 
wedding  day  in  our  home  grounds  among  the  trees  all 
of  which  were  selected  by  her  and  planted  under  her 
direction.  Only  a  living  thing  could  memorialize  one 
so  full  of  life.  I  do  not  think  her  dead,  nor  have  I 
lost  her  companionship.  Her  ambition  for  me  keeps 
me  young  at  seventy-eight;  her  faith  in  me  still  in- 
spires me  with  faith  in  myself.  And  in  every  serious 
question  which  arises  in  my  life  I  ask  myself,  first, 
what  would  Jesus  Christ  counsel  me  to  do,  and,  sec- 
ond, what  would  my  wife  counsel,  and  my  answer  to 
the  second  question  helps  me  to  get  the  desired  answer 
to  the  first. 

When  the  news  of  her  death  reached  America  by 
cable,  the  children  met  and  read  together  the  last 
twenty-one  verses  of  the  thirty -first  chapter  of  Proverbs. 
Nowhere  in  literature  could  they  have  found  so  true  a 
portrait.  She  was  alike  averse  to  fame  for  herself  and 
ambitious  of  fame  for  her  husband.  The  public  criticisms 
which  often  amused  me  always  stung  her;  and  she  habit- 
ually wondered  whether  I  could  not  have  avoided  the 
offense  without  disregarding  a  principle.  But  unreason- 
ably proud  as  she  was  of  her  husband,  she  would  never 
allow  me  to  dedicate  publicly  any  of  my  writings  to 
her;  I  had  to  be  content  with  a  private  dedication  in  an 
edition  especially  bound  for  her,  which  she  kept  among 
her  treasures.  In  these  reminiscences  I  shall  respect  her 
wish;  shall  leave  her  in  the  retirement  which  she  always 
coveted;  but  shall  hope  that  the  reader,  enlightened  by 
this  paragraph,  will  recognize  that  the  story  of  my  life 
from  1855,  when  we  were  engaged,  is  the  story  of  our 


78  REMINISCENCES 

joint  lives,  as  inseparable  in  my  thought  as  in  Tenny- 
son's interpretative  verse:  — 

"  The  two-celled  heart  beating  with  one  full  stroke.  Life." 

I  resume  my  story. 

After  a  brief  summer  vacation  and  three  months  or 
so  in  my  brother's  law  oflSce,  getting  some  first  impres- 
sions of  the  practical  workings  of  law  in  a  great  city,  I 
went  to  Farmington  to  do  some  quiet  and  uninterrupted 
study  in  fundamental  principles.  John  Cutler,  the 
brother-in-law  of  my  Aunt  Clara,  had  his  law  oflSce  in 
Farmington,  and  was  in  the  winter  of  1853-54  a  member 
of  the  Maine  State  Legislature.  During  his  absence  I 
had  charge  of  his  oflBce.  My  duties  were  very  simple. 
They  were  to  keep  the  office  open,  to  communicate  to 
him  messages  received  from  clients,  and  to  tell  them 
when  he  would  be  at  home  and  could  be  seen.  My  pro- 
fessional duty  to  myself  consisted  in  the  study  of  Black- 
stone's  Commentaries  and  Kent's  Commentaries,  which 
I  read  with  assiduity  but  without  avidity.  Throughout 
my  life  I  have  been  interested  not  in  abstract  science  or 
philosophy,  but  in  the  application  of  scientific  and 
philosophical  principles  to  the  conduct  of  fife.  My  in- 
terest in  the  principles  of  social  justice  as  interpreted  by 
Blackstone  and  Kent  was  perhaps  the  less  because  tra- 
ditional law  seemed  to  me  then,  as  it  seems  to  me  now, 
often  inconsistent  with  fundamental  ethical  principles. 

A  German  in  the  village  organized  a  class  in  the  Ger- 
man language,  which  I  joined,  paying  for  the  tuition  at 
the  extravagant  rate  of  eight  cents  a  lesson.  The  class 
met  three  times  a  week.  I  got  a  pretty  thorough  theo- 
retical acquaintance  with  German  grammar,  which,  de- 
spite its  difficulties,  interested  me  on  account  of  its 
scientific  orderliness,  and  I  also  got  then,  and  afterward 


LOVE  AND  LAW  79 

without  a  teacher,  enough  acquaintance  with  the  lan- 
guage to  read  through  Schiller's  "  Wallenstein "  with  the 
aid  of  a  dictionary.  About  the  same  time  I  got  hold  of 
three  small  books  entitled,  respectively,  French,  Italian, 
and  Spanish  Without  a  Master,  and  made  a  little  at- 
tempt to  get  a  reading  acquaintance  in  those  three  lan- 
guages. But  I  did  not  succeed  in  becoming  even  to  a 
limited  extent  a  linguist.  I  have  no  verbal  memory. 
Even  to-day  I  dare  not  quote  a  text  of  Scripture  with- 
out referring  to  the  Bible,  nor  even  a  familiar  line  from 
any  author  without  verifying  the  quotation.  Whether  I 
could  have  acquired  verbal  memory  or  not  I  do  not 
know.  I  made  no  attempt  to  do  so,  and  my  failure  to 
read  in  any  language  but  my  own  has  been  a  handicap 
in  my  life.  But  it  has  been  a  deprivation  of  intellectual 
pleasure  rather  than  of  intellectual  profit;  for  while  it  is 
true  that  the  beauty  of  one  language  can  never  be  ade- 
quately conveyed  through  any  other  language,  the 
thoughts  of  the  great  thinkers  of  the  world  are  always 
translatable  and  generally  are  translated. 

There  was  also  in  Farmington  that  winter  a  village 
debating  society  in  which  I  continued  the  practice  ac- 
quired in  the  Eucleian  of  thinking  on  my  feet.  We  met 
once  a  week,  or  once  a  fortnight,  in  a  small  hall  over  one 
of  the  village  stores.  As  there  was  no  theater  in  town, 
and  no  hall  which  could  serve  the  purpose  of  a  theater, 
as  "movies"  had  not  been  invented,  and  dancing  par- 
ties were  rare  and  village  balls  unknown,  this  debating 
society  constituted  a  sort  of  social  fortnightly  event. 
The  chief  incident  in  its  history  that  I  recall  is  one  elo- 
quent sentence  in  the  peroration  of  the  village  Demos- 
thenes, speaking  against  the  use  of  corporal  punishment 
in  the  schools,  which  he  condemned  as  "abhorrent  to 
those  finer  sentiments  of  humanity  which  go  permeat- 


80  REMINISCENCES 

ing  and  perambulating  through  the  subterranean  re- 
cesses of  the  human  heart." 

When  in  the  spring  Mr.  Cutler  came  back  to  his 
office,  I  returned  to  New  York,  entered  my  brothers' 
law  office,  and  began  at  once  such  practice  of  the  law  as 
was  possible  to  one  who  was  not  a  member  of  the  bar. 
Through  the  influence  of  my  brothers  I  obtained  a  posi- 
tion on  the  staff  of  the  "Times"  as  law  reporter.  It  was 
my  duty  to  visit  the  courts  every  day,  ascertain  what 
had  been  done  or  what  was  expected,  report  the  minor 
incidents,  and  keep  my  employers  informed  when  cases 
of  large  public  interest  were  coming  on  for  trial,  that 
they  might  send  trained  reporters  to  deal  with  them.  It 
is  perhaps  owing  to  this  brief  experience  that  I  have 
always  had  great  sympathy  for  newspaper  reporters  — 
a  class  of  men  generally  about  equally  feared  and  criti- 
cised. During  a  large  part  of  my  life  since  my  gradua- 
tion I  have  been  brought  in  constant  contact  with  the 
men  of  this  profession.  I  have  generally  found  them 
courteous  and  considerate,  honestly  desirous  of  getting 
the  truth  and  of  reporting  it  accurately;  and  I  have 
almost  uniformly  found  them  willing  to  respect  my  reti- 
cence because  I  have  always  been  willing  to  give  them 
information  unless  the  information  was  of  a  kind  which 
ought  not  to  be  communicated  to  the  public. 

My  reporting  for  the  New  York  "Times"  brought 
me  into  relations  with  Henry  J.  Raymond,  its  editor-in- 
chief.  He  was  also  its  managing  editor,  really  if  not 
nominally.  He  had  not  the  power  of  passion  which 
made  Horace  Greeley  a  great  editorial  writer.  He  never 
could  have  done  what  Horace  Greeley  once  did  —  reply 
to  an  opponent  by  printing  in  black-letter  capitals,  with 
a  finger  pointing  to  it,  the  sentence 

B©»  YOU  LIE,  YOU  VILLAIN 


LOVE  AND  LAW  81 

But  he  was  a  greater  editor  than  Greeley,  and  his  well- 
balanced  judgment  made  impossible  for  him  the  intel- 
lectual vagaries  of  his  great  rival.  More  than  any  man 
I  have  ever  known  he  could  attend  to  two  or  three 
things  at  once,  and  apparently  give  his  mind  to  all  of 
them.  He  worked  in  an  office  open  to  his  subordinates, 
received  their  reports,  answered  their  questions,  and  gave 
them  their  instructions  without  taking  his  eyes  from 
his  paper  or  stopping  his  rapidly  moving  pen.  In  this 
way  I  was  brought  into  close  personal  relations  with 
him,  much  closer  than  those  of  a  modern  newspaper  re- 
porter with  his  chief,  whom  he  rarely,  perhaps  never, 
meets.  But  versatile  as  Mr.  Raymond  was,  not  even 
he  could  serve  two  masters;  and  he  lost  his  editorial 
grip  when  he  went  into  politics  as  a  candidate  for 
office. 

My  brothers  had  already  begun  that  legal  literary 
work  which  has  given  to  both  of  them  a  deserved  fame 
among  lawyers.  David  Dudley  Field's  Code  of  Civil 
Procedure  had  been  enacted  by  the  New  York  Legisla- 
ture. It  necessitated  new  methods  of  pleading,  and  the 
first  drafting  of  forms  for  use  under  the  new  code  was 
intrusted  by  my  brothers  to  me  —  of  course  to  be  care- 
fully reconsidered  and  revised  by  them.  I  believe  that 
this  book  of  forms,  in  new  editions,  probably  entirely 
recast,  is  still  in  use.  Certainly  no  better  method  could 
have  been  devised  to  teach  the  clerk  in  the  lawyer's 
office  the  rules  of  the  new  practice.  As  lawyers  for  a 
large  wholesale  concern,  my  brothers  were  charged  with 
the  duty  of  collecting  amounts  due  to  the  concern  from 
dilatory  or  impecunious  debtors.  This  duty  also  fell 
into  my  hands.  The  house  which  we  served  was  equally 
unwilling  to  oppress  the  unfortunate  or  to  be  cheated  by 
the  dishonest.   To  cross-examine  the  concern  which  was 


82  REMINISCENCES 

never  ready  with  money  and  always  ready  with  excuses; 
to  ascertain  whether  the  excuses  were  genuine  or  fic- 
titious, or  partly  genuine  and  partly  fictitious;  to  deter- 
mine what  measure  of  pressure  should  be  applied,  and 
when,  if  at  all,  it  was  wise  to  bring  suit,  involved  per- 
petually perplexing  problems.  The  result  of  my  ex- 
perience in  this  collecting  business  has  been  to  give  me 
more  sympathy  for  creditors  and  less  sympathy  for 
debtors  than  I  might  otherwise  possess  —  more  cer- 
tainly than  is  expressed  by  the  average  story,  which 
almost  invariably  represents  the  creditor  as  a  purse- 
proud  oppressor  and  the  debtor  as  a  wholly  innocent 
unfortunate.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  at  least  quite 
as  frequently  the  debtor  is  willing,  if  not  desirous,  to 
evade  his  obligation  and  the  creditor  wishes  only  to 
come  by  his  ovm. 

In  February,  1855,  seven  or  eight  months  after  I  en- 
tered my  brothers*  office,  the  firm  gained  in  a  day  a 
reputation  by  one  of  those  dramatic  incidents  which 
occur  more  frequently  in  stories  than  in  real  life.  There 
was  in  New  York  City  a  court  of  local  and  limited  juris- 
diction, since  abolished,  known  as  the  "Marine  Court." 
Its  Chief  Justice  was  a  somewhat  impetuous,  not  to  say 
peppery.  Irishman  by  the  name  of  Florence  McCarthy. 
The  New  York  "Times"  published  what  was  intended 
by  the  reporter  as  a  jocose  paragraph  entitled  "Marine 
Court  — What  Was  Not  Done  There."  The  Chief 
Justice  thereupon  summoned  Henry  J.  Raymond,  the 
editor,  and  Fletcher  Harper,  Jr.,  the  publisher,  to  show 
cause  why  they  should  not  be  punished  for  contempt. 
Mr.  Raymond  was  at  that  time  the  Lieutenant-Governor 
of  the  State.  The  summons  of  the  Lieutenant-Governor 
to  answer  for  contempt  to  a  court  of  local  and  limited 
jurisdiction  for  a  jocose  publication  in  a  prominent 


LOVE  AND  LAW  83 

newspaper  focused  the  attention  of  the  entire  State  on 
a  paragraph  which  would  otherwise  have  passed  un- 
noticed. The  course  of  the  newspapers  and  of  my 
brother  Vaughan,  who  was  retained  to  appear  for  the 
"Times,"  intensified  the  public  interest.  The  "Times," 
the  next  day,  in  reporting  the  fact  that  its  proprietors 
had  been  summoned  for  contempt,  reprinted  the  article 
with  a  brief  comment,  the  spirit  of  which  is  sufficiently 
indicated  by  a  single  sentence:  "To  attempt  a  crusade 
against  the  press  is  sometimes  successful,  while  occa- 
sionally it  is  not  successful."  In  contempt  proceedings 
the  judge  who  issues  the  summons  also  hears  the  case, 
adjudges  the  guilt  or  innocence  of  the  accused,  and  de- 
termines the  punishment.  The  case,  therefore,  came  for 
a  hearing  before  Judge  McCarthy  himself. 

Either  one  of  two  policies  is  possible  in  such  a  case: 
an  apology  framed  to  disarm  the  judge;  or  a  bold  de- 
fense of  the  right  of  the  accused,  which  involves  the  as- 
sumption that  the  judge  is  in  the  wrong.  My  brother 
pursued  the  latter  course.  He,  in  perfectly  respectful 
terms,  affirmed  that  the  Judge  had  no  legal  right  to 
punish  the  proprietors  of  the  "Times"  for  contempt, 
and  clearly,  though  by  implication,  warned  him  of  the 
danger  of  impeachment  proceedings  if  he  inflicted  either 
fine  or  imprisonment  upon  them. 

Mr.  Harper  [he  said]  shrinks  from  do  responsibility  for  the 
conduct  of  the  "Times."  He  stands  entirely  ready  to  be  held 
to  a  general  moral  responsibility  towards  the  public  for  the 
good  and  judicious  conduct  of  it.  In  this  sense  of  responsi- 
bility —  one  not  enforceable  by  law,  but  which  weighs  more 
heavily  upon  an  upright  and  worthy  mind  than  legal  penal- 
ties —  Mr.  Harper  is  undoubtedly  responsible  for  the  contents 
of  the  "  Times  " ;  not  to  this  Court,  indeed,  but  to  upright,  hon- 
orable, high-minded  men  everywhere. 

But  guilty  he  is  not  of  an  act  which  he  did  not  perform,  and 


\ 


84  REMINISCENCES 

the  performance  of  which  he  did  not  authorize,  and  was  un- 
aware of.  Guilt  is  personal;  it  is  individual.  I  do  not  mean  that 
it  is  essential  to  guilt,  in  the  legal  sense,  that  a  man  should  be 
proved  to  have  intended  to  violate  the  law,  but  he  must  have 
intended  to  do  the  act,  or  to  have  it  done,  by  which  the  law 
is  violated. 

Then,  indirectly  indeed,  but  all  the  more  effectively, 
he  warned  the  Judge  of  the  peril  in  which  he  would  place 
himself  in  using  the  extraordinary  powers  with  which 
the  Court  is  clothed  in  contempt  cases,  if  he  violated 
this  fundamental  principle  that  no  person  can  ever  be 
punished  criminally  for  the  unauthorized  act  of  another. 

Your  Honor  will  not  forget  Peck's  case.  He  had  rendered 
an  opinion  in  an  important  cause,  and  an  article  appeared  in  a 
newspaper  severely  criticising  it.  Judge  Peck  summoned  the 
editor  before  him  for  contempt.  The  author  of  the  article, 
Luke  E.  Lawless,  having  authorized  the  editor  to  give  up  his 
name,  the  editor  was  discharged,  but  Lawless  was  committed. 
Peck  was  impeached  for  this  committal  as  unjust  and  oppres- 
sive. 

Judge  McCarthy.  That  was  for  a  mere  attack  on  the  judge. 

Mr.  Abbott.  No,  sir.  Peck  had  decided  a  cause,  and  the 
article  was  an  attack  on  his  decision  as  erroneous  and  con- 
trary to  law. 

Judge  McCarthy.  Well,  any  newspaper  has  a  right  to  do 
that. 

Mr.  Abbott  (with  emphasis).  I  am  very  glad,  sir,  that  the 
rights  of  newspapers  are  so  liberally  construed  in  this  Court. 
[Sensation.]  Peck  was  tried  before  the  United  States  Senate 
and  acquitted  by  one  vote,  on  the  ground,  it  is  understood, 
that,  though  the  committal  was  illegal,  he  acted  ignorantly, 
A  judge  who  should  follow  in  his  steps  by  the  light  of  his 
example  might  not  be  thought  to  have  the  same  excuse. 

The  Court,  on  the  request  of  the  counsel  for  the  writer 
of  the  article  and  for  the  editor,  Mr.  Raymond,  ad- 
journed the  hearing  "until  a  day  to  be  agreed  upon  after 
adjournment."   No  agreement  was  ever  reached;  no  fur- 


LOVE  AND  LAW  85 

ther  hearing  was  ever  had,  and  no  further  action  was 
ever  taken. 

This  case  gave  to  Abbott  Brothers  a  wide  advertise- 
ment and  brought  to  us  more  business  than  we  could 
attend  to.  I  say  we,  because,  though  I  could  not  be  ad- 
mitted to  the  bar  until  I  became  of  age,  nearly  two  years 
later,  I  was  from  this  time  on  practically  a  member  of 
the  firm.  We  often  worked  at  the  office  late  into  the 
night.  We  sometimes  went  over  to  the  office  for  work 
two  or  three  hours  before  breakfast.  Once  I  worked  all 
night  long,  keeping  myself  awake  by  drinking  strong 
coffee  and  binding  a  wet  towel  around  my  head.  My 
brother  Austin  was  an  office  man.  He  examined  titles, 
drew  deeds,  and  began  that  sort  of  administration  of 
estates  which  eventually  became  an  important  part  of 
his  professional  business.  My  brother  Vaughan  had  his 
time  fully  occupied  in  his  literary  legal  work,  in  the  trial 
and  argument  of  cases  in  the  court,  and  in  the  study  of 
law  necessary  as  special  preparation  for  his  court  argu- 
ments. It  gradually  devolved  upon  me  to  do  the  kind 
of  work  which,  I  judge  from  books,  is  done  by  the  at- 
torney in  the  English  courts.  To  talk  with  the  clients, 
to  get  their  story,  to  examine  and  cross-examine  the 
witnesses  whom  they  brought  before  me,  and  to  lay 
before  my  brother  Vaughan  the  results  of  these  pre- 
liminary inquisitions  became  my  most  important  work 
in  the  firm. 

As  one  result  of  the  contempt  case  Abbott  Brothers 
became  counsel  for  the  New  York  "Times,"  and  during 
my  connection  with  the  firm  there  never  was  a  year  in 
which  there  were  not  one  or  more  libel  suits  pending 
against  the  paper.  My  experience  in  these  libel  suits 
tends  to  justify  the  popular  prejudices  against  the 
complainant  in  such  cases.    I  think  that  in  nearly  all 


86  REMINISCENCES 

these  cases,  the  complainant  brought  his  suit  in  the 
hope  that  the  paper  would  find  it  cheaper  to  buy  him 
off  than  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the  lawsuit.  In  fact  the 
paper  never  did  buy  the  complainant  off,  and  in  only 
one  case  was  a  verdict  given  against  it. 

From  time  immemorial  in  England,  when  a  murderer 
has  been  executed  on  the  gallows,  he  has  been  allowed 
to  make  to  the  bystanders  a  brief  speech,  commonly 
called  the  "Last  Dying  Speech  and  Confession."  The 
object  of  this  English  rule  is  probably  partly  to  give  the 
criminal  an  opportunity  to  confess,  and  so  not  go  to  his 
death  with  his  soul  unrelieved,  but  it  is  also  partly  to 
give  the  authorities  that  kind  of  information  which  it 
is  thought  may  be  furnished  when  the  criminal  may  be 
impelled  by  the  solemn  sentence  of  approaching  judg- 
ment to  tell  the  truth,  because  no  longer  under  any 
motive  to  tell  a  lie. 

A  murder  had  been  committed  in  New  Jersey.  A  man 
was  arrested,  tried,  convicted,  and  executed  for  the 
murder.  In  his  dying  speech  he  professed  his  innocence 
and  charged  the  murder  upon  another  man.  This  speech 
the  "Times"  reported.  For  publishing  that  report  the 
man  so  accused  brought  a  libel  suit  against  the  "Times." 
It  was  referred  to  me  to  ascertain  what  were  the  facts 
in  the  case  and  what  probability  there  was  in  the  charge. 
The  result  of  my  amateur  detective  work  was  my  own 
conviction  that,  on  the  one  hand,  the  charge  could  not 
be  proved  true,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  not  wholly 
improbable.  When  the  case  came  on  for  trial,  the  re- 
sults of  my  inquiries  were  given  to  the  jury,  for  the 
double  purpose  of  proving  that  there  was  no  malice  in 
the  publication,  and  that  the  plaintiff  was  so  under  a 
shadow  from  other  circumstances  that  this  publication 
could   not   have   been   a  great  injury  to  his  already 


LOVE  AND  LAW  87 

damaged  reputation.  My  brother  then  moved  to  dismiss 
the  complaint,  on  the  ground  that  long-continued  tradi- 
tion as  well  as  public  policy  justified  the  practice  of 
allowing  the  condemned  to  make  a  speech  upon  the 
scaffold,  and  now  that  the  public  were  no  longer  ad- 
mitted to  witness  the  execution,  the  same  policy  justi- 
fied the  press  in  giving  that  speech  to  the  public.  The 
question  was  new.  The  Judge  reserved  its  determina- 
tion for  the  opinion  of  the  three  judges  at  the  General 
Term,  and  directed  the  jury  to  render  a  verdict  sub- 
ject to  that  opinion.  The  jury  assessed  the  damage  at 
six  cents,  and  the  plaintiff  pursued  the  case  no  further. 

Another  case  was  even  more  dramatic.  The  New 
York  "Times"  was  sued  for  libel  for  publishing  a  mar- 
riage notice  in  which  no  time,  no  place,  and  no  minister's 
name  were  given.  The  plaintiff  affirmed  that  the  woman 
mentioned  was  a  public  prostitute.  My  brother  Vaughan 
put  in  a  demurrer  on  the  ground  that  to  charge  the  plain- 
tiff with  living  with  a  prostitute  would  have  been  libel- 
ous, but  to  charge  marriage  with  her  was  not;  it  might 
rightly  be  taken  to  imply  that  she  had  reformed,  and 
that  perhaps  he  had  had  some  share  in  her  reformation. 
Meanwhile  I  was  at  work  endeavoring  to  ascertain  the 
circumstances  of  the  case.  The  result  of  my  detective 
work  was  the  discovery  that  the  plaintiff  had  brought 
this  woman  to  the  city,  had  seduced  her,  and  that  one 
of  her  friends  had  put  in  the  marriage  notice  to  save  her 
reputation  in  her  country  home.  It  is  needless  to  say 
that  as  soon  as  the  plaintiff  discovered  that  we  knew 
the  facts  he  instantly  abandoned  the  case. 

I  have  sometimes  wondered  whether  the  amateur 
detective  work  which  I  did  in  these  and  similar  cases 
explains  the  fascination  which  detective  stories  have  for 
me  to  this  day,  or  whether  some  temperamental  in- 


88  REMINISCENCES 

terest  in  detective  investigation  explains  both  my  in- 
terest in  the  detective  story  and  my  interest  in  the 
detective  work. 

My  duties,  however,  were  not  confined  to  preparation 
in  the  office  for  trial  in  the  courts.  Gradually  and  in- 
creasingly the  litigation  was  turned  over  to  me.  An 
assistant  took  the  law  reporting  for  the  "Times"  off  my 
hands,  though  it  was  still  conducted  under  my  super- 
vision. Another  assistant  a  little  later  took  the  general 
business  of  bill  collecting,  though  the  larger  and  more 
difficult  collections  were  still  assigned  to  me.  Once  I 
went  to  Georgia,  to  find,  when  I  reached  my  destina- 
tion, that  the  debtor  had  made  an  assignment  for  the 
benefit  of  his  creditors.  I  succeeded,  however,  in  get- 
ting enough  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the  trip.  In  March, 
1855,  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  I  tried  my  first  case;  in 
July  of  the  same  year  the  first  case  of  real  importance; 
winning  in  both  cases  on  the  trial,  though  the  judgment 
in  the  first  case  was  reversed  on  appeal.  I  ought  per- 
haps to  add  that  in  one  of  my  weekly  letters  to  my 
cousin,  later  to  become  my  wife,  I  wrote  that  I  thought 
in  that  case  justice  was  on  our  side  but  the  law  was 
against  us.  In  March,  1856, 1  wrote  to  her  of  three  more 
cases,  each  involving  twenty  thousand  dollars,  "all  in 
my  department  to  look  after.  .  .  .  Vaughan  argues 
them  at  court.  But  any  slips,  any  omissions,  any  screw 
loose  in  all  the  intricate  machinery  of  their  litigation,  I 
am  responsible  for."  What  with  my  law  reporting,  my 
arguing  of  motions,  my  trial  of  cases  in  courts  of  in- 
ferior jurisdiction  in  which  one  who  was  not  a  member 
of  the  bar  might  lawfully  represent  a  client,  and  in  courts 
of  superior  jurisdiction,  where  I  was  allowed  to  act  as 
a  representative  for  my  brothers,  who  were  members  of 
the  bar,  I  became  a  familiar  figure  in  the  courts.    One 


LOVE  AND  LAW  89 

lawyer  jeered  at  me  as  a  young  man  of  twenty-seven 
from  Massachusetts,  when  I  was  not  yet  twenty-one. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  I  did  not  undeceive  him.  One 
judge  put  before  me  a  difficult  question  of  jurisdiction 
which  he  had  to  decide  and  asked  my  opinion  upon  it, 
and  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  give  him  an  opinion  which 
he  said  coincided  with  the  one  to  which  his  own  mind 
was  tending. 

At  length  the  long-wished-for  fall  of  1856  arrived  — 
long  wished  for  because  I  could  not  be  sure  of  an  income 
adequate  to  support  a  wife  until  I  was  admitted  to  the 
bar,  and  I  could  not  be  admitted  to  the  bar  until  I  was 
twenty-one.  The  examination  of  candidates  was  ap- 
pointed for  the  last  week  in  November.  The  regula- 
tion required  the  candidate  to  file  with  his  application 
for  examination  an  affidavit  that  he  was  twenty-one. 
That  I  could  not  do.  I  went  to  a  Supreme  Court  judge 
with  the  request  that  I  might  be  permitted  to  enter  my 
name  for  examination,  and,  if  successful,  file  the  affi- 
davit on  the  18th  of  December,  when  I  should  be  of 
age,  and  receive  my  appointment  then.  He  expressed 
surprise.  "I  thought,"  he  said,  "you  had  been  practic- 
ing law  in  the  courts  for  three  years  past."  But  he  gave 
me  the  order  and  I  presented  myself  for  examination. 
The  result  I  will  quote  from  the  report  sent  to  my 
cousin :  — 

I  was  examined  last  week.  There  was  a  class  of  ten  of  us  in 
all  and  the  examination  occupied  about  five  hours'  continuous 
examination.^  The  result  is  not  known  as  yet,  and  probably 
will  not  be  till  next  week,  but  as  one  of  the  examiners  has  since 
congratulated  me  on  passing  a  "brilliant  examination,"  and 

*  It  was  oral,  conducted  by  expert  lawyers  who  knew  well  how  to  cross- 
examine,  and  who  had  determined  to  make  the  examination  severe,  spurred 
to  that  resolve  by  current  criticisms  on  previous  examinations  as  superficial 
and  perfunctory. 


90  REMINISCENCES 

another  told  my  brother  that  I  was  fit  to  practice  anywhere, 
and  one  of  the  judges  has  congratulated  me  and  intimated 
that  I  was  probably  the  only  one  of  the  class  that  would  be 
admitted,  I  do  not  feel  very  anxious. 

But  before  these  reports  reached  me  I  did  feel  anxious 
—  very  anxious.  For  on  the  examination  I  had  said  "I 
do  not  know"  to  so  many  questions  that  I  went  home 
that  night  believing  that  I  had  failed.  I  fancy  that  what 
made  my  examination  "brilliant"  was  the  fact  that  I 
did  no  guessing  and  dared  confess  my  ignorance.  Cour- 
age to  confess  ignorance  I  have  since  found  as  valuable 
in  theology  as  in  law.  An  amusing  incident  illustrated 
the  value  of  these  confessions.  One  question  both  per- 
plexed and  interested  me  so  much  that  when  the  ex- 
aminations were  over  I  went  forward  and  asked  the 
examiner  what  was  the  correct  answer,  and  received  the 
reply,  "I  do  not  know;  it  is  easier  to  ask  questions  than 
it  is  to  answer  them."  The  judge's  intimation  proved 
to  be  correct.  I  was  the  only  one  of  the  class  that 
passed,  though  I  believe  that  a  second  examination  was 
granted,  at  which  three  or  four  of  the  other  candidates 
were  successful.  The  examination  passed  and  the  cer- 
tificate assured,  I  threw  myself  into  the  practice  of  law 
without  any  of  the  reserve  which  previous  conditions 
had  rendered  necessary. 

A  few  characters  at  the  bar  stand  out  prominently 
before  me  as  my  memory  recalls  the  past  —  probably 
not  because  they  were  the  most  important  but  because 
they  were  characteristic  types.  A.  Oakey  Hall  would 
have  been  an  able  lawyer  and  perhaps  a  successful 
politician  if  he  had  not  allowed  himself  to  be  used  by  the 
Tammany  ape  to  pull  chestnuts  out  of  the  fire  for  others 
to  eat.  "Dick"  Busteed  no  one  would  have  called  a 
great  lawyer,  but  he  was  a  successful  one.    Gossip  said 


LOVE  AND  LAW  91 

that  he  always  told  his  clients  that  their  cause  was  just 
and  their  victory  sure,  and  accounted  for  defeat  when  it 
came  by  charging  it  to  the  stupidity  or  corruption  of  the 
judge  and  the  jury.  His  dogmatic  imitation  of  knowl- 
edge, his  ready  wit,  his  unfailing  good  humor,  and  his 
adaptable  conscience  made  him  a  dangerous  opponent 
in  a  lawsuit.  The  two  leaders  at  the  bar  in  jury  trials 
were  James  T.  Brady  and  Charles  O'Conor.  James  T. 
Brady  was  a  natural  orator  and  depended  on  his  ability 
to  carry  the  jury  by  his  eloquent  summing  up;  but  to 
me  as  a  youthful  reporter  he  appeared  to  try  his  cases 
without  much  preparation.  Charles  O'Conor  had  no 
more  imagination  or  emotion  than  a  problem  in  Euclid's 
geometry;  but,  as  in  Euclid,  if  you  granted  his  premises 
you  could  not  escape  his  conclusions.  His  direct  ex- 
amination was  so  clear  and  orderly  that  the  essentials 
of  the  witnesses'  story  remained  with  the  jury  until  the 
end  of  the  trial,  and  his  cross-examination  was  so  keen 
and  searching  that  a  lying  or  prevaricating  witness 
rarely  escaped  detection  and  confusion. 

Two  judges  of  that  time  strikingly  represented  two 
contrasted  types  of  judicial  mind  and  method.  Judge 
Murray  Hoffman  was  an  incarnated  digest  of  legal  de- 
cisions. His  mind  was  like  a  pair  of  scales;  he  put  on  one 
side  all  the  decisions  for,  on  the  other  all  the  decisions 
against,  the  plaintiff's  contention,  and  let,  not  the 
majority,  but  the  weight  decide  the  question.  Judge  T. 
J.  Oakley  rarely  came  nearer  citing  an  authority  than 
by  saying,  "We  recall  a  case  in  Johnson's  Reports  which 
bears  on  the  case."  In  a  motion  we  had  before  him,  our 
opponent  cited  the  decision  of  a  court  of  concurrent 
jurisdiction  directly  in  his  favor,  to  which  Judge  Oakley 

replied,   "Yes!    yes!    that   shows  what   Judge  

thought  about  it,"  and  promptly  proceeded  to  decide 


m  REMINISCENCES 

\/  the  other  way.  Gossip  reported  that  he  read  nothing 
but  French  novels.  But  he  had  a  clear  comprehension 
of  the  principles  of  social  justice  and  their  application 
to  special  cases;  his  decisions  were  universally  respected, 
and  he  was  rarely  reversed.  He  was  absolutely  without 
prejudice,  personal  or  political,  except  that  if  a  woman 
were  before  him,  either  as  witness  or  party,  his  gallantry 
always  leaned  a  little  to  her  side. 

My  experience  of  the  courts  during  these  six  years  at 
the  New  York  bar  —  1853-59  —  does  not  warrant  the 
current  criticism  of  the  law  and  the  lawyers.  There 
were  lawyers  who  promoted  quarrels  to  get  fees.  But 
they  were  the  pariahs  of  the  profession.  The  best  lawyers 
were  peacemakers,  and  though,  of  necessity,  professional 
partisans  when  engaged  in  litigation,  they  were  generally 
honorable  partisans.  At  a  later  date  two  New  York 
judges  were  found  guilty  of  corruption,  but  at  the  time 
of  which  I  write  the  judges  were,  without  exception, 
high-minded,  honorable,  incorruptible  men,  free  from 
political  bias  and  independent  of  popular  sentiment, 
trained  and  able  lawyers  —  abler  than  the  average 
practitioner,  but  not  than  the  ablest.  They  were  uni- 
formly courteous;  though  for  two  and  a  half  of  the  five 
and  a  half  years  of  my  legal  experience  I  was  but  a  clerk 
in  my  brothers'  office,  I  was  always  treated  with  re- 
spectful consideration.  They  were  hard  workers;  their 
hours  in  court  were  from  ten  to  three  or  four  o'clock, 
and  sometimes  from  nine  to  five  or  six,  and  their  even- 
ings were  largely  spent  in  their  libraries  studying  the 
questions  submitted  to  them  or  writing  their  opinions. 
Shorthand  writers  were  not  then  attached  to  the  courts, 
and  the  trial  judge  had  to  make  his  own  notes  and,  so 
to  speak,  be  his  own  reporter.  The  juries  were  made  up 
of  the  plain  people;  though  lawyers,  doctors,  and  clergy- 


LOVE  AND  LAW  93 

men  were  excused  from  jury  duty,  and,  I  believe,  also 
teachers  and  editors.  But  in  my  experience  the  jury 
thus  composed  could  be  depended  upon  to  get  the  es- 
sential facts  in  all  simple  cases  and  to  render  a  rational 
verdict  thereon.  I  preferred  to  try  my  cases  before  a  jury 
rather  than  before  a  referee,  unless  there  were  compli- 
cated accounts  to  be  unraveled  or  some  analogous  com- 
plications requiring  patient  and  tedious  analysis.  There 
were  then,  as  now,  law's  delays,  but  they  were  not 
generally  due  to  any  deliberate  obstruction  of  justice. 
They  were  due  partly  to  what  I  thought  was  excess  of 
courtesy  by  the  court  to  the  counsel  and  of  counsel  to 
each  other,  partly  to  the  American  tradition  that  the 
judge  must  not  interfere  with  the  counsel  in  the  trial  of 
a  case,  as  the  English  judges  often  do,  but  largely  to  the 
fact  that  there  were  not  judges  enough  to  do  the  work 
which  came  before  the  courts.  I  ought  to  add  that  I 
had  no  experience  in  either  criminal  or  corporation  law, 
and  have  no  means  of  comparing  the  courts  of  1914 
with  those  of  1853-59. 

Law  business  did  not  absorb  all  my  attention.  Dur- 
ing the  first  part  of  these  seven  years  I  played  the  organ 
at  one  or  two  different  churches  on  Sunday  to  add  to 
my  income.  I  wrote  occasionally  for  the  press.  Among 
the  contributions  was  one  on  "Capital  Punishment," 
which  was  published  in  a  law  magazine,  and  one  on 
"Woman's  Rights,"  which  was  never  published,  for- 
tunately for  me,  for  it  advocated  the  cause  of  woman 
suffrage,  a  cause  from  which  my  wife  later  converted 
me.  But  my  chief  literary  work  was  the  joint  prepara- 
tion with  my  two  brothers  of  a  couple  of  novels  published 
under  a  nom  de  plume  composed  of  the  first  syllable  of 
each  name  —  Benjamin,  Austin,  Lyman,  combined  in 
Benauly.   The  first  novel,  "Cone  Cut  Corners,"  had  a 


94  REMINISCENCES 

fair  success;  the  second,  in  my  judgment  a  better  story, 
had  no  success  at  all,  and  put  an  end  to  our  Hterary 
ambitions. 

But  more  important  as  an  avocation  than  either 
music  or  literature  was  pohtics.  An  account  of  the 
pohtical  situation  and  of  my  interest  in  pohtics  and  the 
part  I  played  in  it  must  be  reserved  for  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  V 

POLITICS 

THE  period  of  which  I  am  writing,  1850-60,  is  per- 
haps the  most  dramatic  poHtically  in  the  history 
of  the  country.  The  Compromise  of  1850  was 
introduced  by  Henry  Clay  and  supported  by  Daniel 
Webster  for  the  purpose  of  settling  the  slavery  question 
for  all  time  and  taking  it  out  of  politics.  It  had  the  op- 
posite effect.  It  fanned  the  smoldering  emblems  of 
popular  discontent  into  a  fierce  flame  of  mutual  ani- 
mosity, and  proved  the  precursor  of  a  prolonged  and 
bloody  war.  The  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise 
opened  to  slavery  territory  which  that  Compromise 
had  pledged  to  freedom,  and  this  repeal  intensified  in 
the  North  a  distrust  of  Southern  politicians  and  their 
Northern  allies.  The  refusal  of  the  Northern  reformer 
to  accept  the  new  agreement  was  taken  in  the  South  as 
a  new  declaration  of  war  against  slavery,  and  a  new 
argument  for  a  dissolution  of  the  Union.  The  Fugitive 
Slave  Law  brought  the  slaveholder  into  the  North  in 
pursuit  of  his  escaping  slave,  and  made  vivid  and  real 
to  the  North  the  slave  system  which  had  before  been 
remote  and  dim.  The  underground  railway,  organized 
for  the  escape  of  fugitive  slaves  to  Canada,  and  the  re- 
sistance offered  to  the  law,  sometimes  by  protracted 
legal  proceedings,  sometimes  by  mobs  led  by  men  of 
national  reputation,  intensified  the  indignation  of  the 
South  against  the  North. 


96  REMINISCENCES 

Senator  Douglas's  attempt  at  settlement  fared  no 
better  than  the  Compromise  measure.    His  proposal  to 
leave  the  question  of  slavery  in  new  territory  to  be  de- 
termined by  the  first  settlers  was  resented  as  a  demand 
that  the  Nation  abdicate  its  national  prerogative,  and 
leave  the  future  destiny  of  an  imperial  domain  to  be  de- 
termined by  the  few  thousand  pioneers,  adventurers, 
and  fortune-seekers  who  should  chance  to  be  the  first 
settlers.   The  immediate  effect  of  the  Nebraska  Bill  was 
an  organized  effort  both  in  the  North  and  in  the  South 
to  flood  the  new  territory  with  settlers;  the  inevitable 
result  was  open  war  between  them.    The  assault  on 
Senator   Sumner,    unarmed    and   defenseless,    was   re- 
garded throughout  the  North,  as  Senator  Wilson  char- 
acterized  it,   as   "brutal,   murderous,   and   cowardly," 
but  his  assailant,  after  resigning  his  seat  in  the  House, 
was  reelected  by  his  district  with  only  six  votes  against 
him.     There  could    be   no   more   convincing    evidence 
of  the  incalculable  difference  in   moral  standards  be- 
tween the  two   communities.    "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," 
written  with  the  purpose  of  promoting  in  the  North 
a  more  charitable  feeling  toward   the  South,  and  so 
uniting  both  sections  in  a  common  effort  for  a  change, 
produced  the  reverse   effect;  Legree  was  taken  alike 
in  the  South  and  in  the  North  as  the  author's  portrait 
of  the  slave-owner.    The  Dred  Scott  decision,  expected 
and  possibly  contrived  by  politicians  to  end  the  agita- 
tion by  a  decree  that  Congress  had  no  power  to  ex- 
clude slavery  from  the  Territories,  simply  solidified  and 
intensified  the  determination  in  the  North  to  prohibit 
its  extension. 

Out  of  this  turmoil  of  opinion  and  conflict  of  endeavor 
four  unorganized  and  ill-defined  parties  were  gradually 
evolved:  — 


POLITICS  97 

The  Pro-Slavery  party. 

The  Abolition  party. 

The  Unionist  party. 

The  Anti-Slavery  party. 

The  Pro-Slavery  party  held  that  slavery  was  wise  for 
^he  community,  humane  for  the  negro,  supported  by 
Scripture,  ordained  by  God.  The  object  of  its  adherents 
was  the  establishment  of  a  nation  based  on  the  subor- 
dination of  the  negro  to  the  white  man.  It  dominated 
the  South,  and  had  a  few  logical  and  courageous  repre- 
sentatives in  the  North.  Thus  Charles  O'Conor,  per- 
haps at  that  time  the  ablest  lawyer  at  the  New  York 
bar,  wrote  (January  19,  1860):  — 

Among  us  at  the  North,  the  sole  question  for  reflection, 
study,  and  friendly  interchange  of  thought  should  be.  Is  negro 
slavery  unjust?  The  rational  and  dispassionate  inquirer  will 
find  no  difficulty  in  arriving  at  my  conclusion.  It  is  fit  and 
proper;  it  is  in  its  own  nature,  as  an  institution,  beneficial  to 
both  races;  and  the  effect  of  this  assertion  is  not  diminished 
by  our  admitting  that  many  faults  are  practiced  under  it. 

The  Abolition  party  held  that  slavery  was  the  sum  of 
all  villainies;  that  no  laws  or  compacts  or  constitutions 
could  justify  it;  that  the  duty  of  the  hour  was  imme- 
diate and  unconditional  emancipation;  and  that,  since 
under  the  Constitution  the  Federal  Government  both 
directly  and  indirectly  indorsed  slavery,  it  was  the 
duty  of  the  North  to  withdraw  at  once  from  the  Union 
and  so  end  its  responsibility  for  the  crime  against  hu- 
manity. The  Abolitionists  constituted  a  very  small 
minority;  but  made  up  in  ability,  eloquence,  and,  I  must 
add,  in  dogmatism,  what  they  lacked  in  numbers. 

The  Unionist  party  was  composed  of  men  who  held 
diverse  opinions  respecting  slavery,  but  who  agreed  that 
the  duty  of  the  hour  was  to  preserve  the  Union  and  the 


98  REMINISCENCES 

Constitution  at  all  hazards,  and  that  this  Union  and 
Constitution,  founded  on  compromise,  could  be  sus- 
tained only  by  compromise.  It  was  essentially  a  party 
of  mediation,  and  as  such  was  much  more  opposed  to 
anti-slavery  agitation  than  to  the  perpetuity  or  even 
the  extension  of  slavery.  This  party  in  the  beginning 
of  the  decade  dominated  the  great  centers  of  commerce, 
the  great  industrial  and  commercial  organizations,  and 
the  great  religious  societies,  and  at  first  very  largely  the 
churches. 

The  Anti-Slavery  party  was  composed  of  those  wlio 
were  opposed  to  slavery,  but  who  believed  that  the 
Nation  had  no  more  legal  right  to  interfere  with  slavery 
in  the  States  than  with  serfdom  in  Russia,  but  who  also 
believed  that  it  had  an  absolute  constitutional  right  to 
exclude  slavery  from  national  Territories;  and  that  if 
this  were  done,  slavery,  forbidden  extension,  would  in 
time  die  in  the  Southern  States,  with  the  consent  of  its 
present  supporters,  as  it  had  previously  died  in  the  rest 
of  the  civilized  world.  This  party  included  from  the 
first  such  men  as  Chase,  Seward,  Lincoln,  and  Henry 
Ward  Beecher. 

The  logical  outcome  of  the  Pro-Slavery  party  was 
the  Southern  Confederacy;  the  logical  outcome  of  the 
Anti-Slavery  party  was  the  Republican  party;  the 
logical  outcome  of  the  conflict  between  the  two  was  the 
Civil  War. 

My  father  was  temperamentally  radical  in  his  pur- 
poses but  conservative  in  his  methods.  I  inherited  his 
temperament  and  received  my  first  political  instructions 
from  his  counsels.  I  belonged,  therefore,  both  by  tem- 
perament and  by  conviction  to  the  Anti-Slavery  party. 
The  impracticable  methods  and  the  uncharitable  spirit 
of  the  Abolitionists  were  equally  abhorrent  to  me.   But 


POLITICS  99 

the  notion  of  Charles  O'Conor  that  negro  slavery  was 
"an  institution  beneficial  to  both  races"  seemed  to  me 
a  notion  too  preposterous  for  argument.  I  entered  col- 
lege with  a  great  admiration  for  Daniel  Webster,  which 
I  still  entertain.  I  have  never  regarded  him  as  an 
"apostate."  The  same  passion  for  the  Union  which  in- 
spired his  reply  to  Hayne  in  1830  inspired  his  Seventh 
of  March  Speech  in  1850.  He  saw  more  clearly  than  the 
anti-slavery  leaders  the  real  peril  of  a  civil  war;  he 
thought  such  a  war  could  end  only  in  disunion,  and 
with  many  of  his  contemporaries  he  thought  that  the 
Nation  which  had  been  founded  in  compromise  could 
be  saved  only  by  compromise.  That  his  policy  was 
partly  dictated  by  his  ambition  for  the  Presidency  I  do 
not  doubt.  But  he  who  would  condemn  Daniel  Webster 
for  acting  under  the  influence  of  mixed  motives  needs 
first  to  be  sure  that  he  never  acts  under  mixed  motives 
himself.  Nevertheless,  while  I  did  not  and  do  not  doubt 
the  honesty  of  Daniel  Webster  and  Henry  Clay,  the 
influence  of  Mr.  Beecher,  and  still  more  the  logic  of 
events,  brought  my  brothers  and  myseK  early  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  anti-slavery  conflict  was  one  which 
could  not  be  settled  by  compromise,  that  every  com- 
promise was  but  a  truce,  and  that  after  every  truce  a 
bitterer  conflict  impended.  In  November,  1855, 1  wrote 
to  my  cousin  as  follows :  — 

November  6,  1855. 

This  fall  we  have  all  taken  a  strong  interest  in  politics  — 
which  is  unusual  —  and  even  done  a  very  little  electioneering. 
I  mean,  if  I  can,  to  do  some  to  some  purpose  next  year.  Amer- 
ica will  either  remain  in  God's  service,  an  exponent  of  individ- 
ual freedom,  or  it  will  go  over  to  Satan's,  and  relapse  into 
oligarchy  and  thence  into  monarchy.  I  beheve  we  are  near 
where  the  two  roads  branch  off.  Republicanism  points  to 
freedom.    The  road  hes  through  difficulties  and  dangers,  and 


100  REMINISCENCES 

it  may  be  through  temporary  disunion  and  even  revolution 
and  anarchy.  But  it  is  the  path  of  right.  The  other  is 
smooth  and  wicked.  The  way  looks  doubtful,  judging  by 
men's  signs.  Were  it  not  for  my  faith  in  God  I  should  on  the 
whole  expect  the  slave  oligarchy  to  conquer  and  our  country 
to  follow  the  Roman  nation,  and  in  three  hundred  years  our 
country  be  as  much  worse  than  it  was  as  many  years  ago  as 
the  Italian  lazzaroni  are  worse  than  the  native  North  Ameri- 
can Indian.    God  grant  not. 

A  year  and  a  half  later  a  trip  to  Georgia,  on  legal  busi- 
ness for  the  firm,  intensified  my  growing  conviction  that 
war  was  inevitable,  and  my  resolve  to  prepare  to  meet 
it  when  it  came.  The  following  letter,  written  to  my 
cousin,  April  17,  1856,  after  my  return  from  the  South, 
I  might  think  tainted  by  Northern  prejudice  if  it  were 
not  only  too  abundantly  confirmed  by  the  "Journal" 
of  Frederick  Law  Olmsted  of  his  Southern  journeys  in 
1853-54:  — 

As  we  left  Washington  City  I  began  to  get  into  a  rather 
dubious-looking  company.  Everybody  chewed  tobacco  and 
smoked  cigars;  and  from  the  looks  of  collars  and  shirt  bosoms 
I  should  think  very  few  had  very  large  monthly  bills  to  settle 
with  their  washerwomen.  We  were  followed  by  birds  —  sea 
gulls  —  as  we  sailed  down  the  river.  At  the  bows  of  the  boat, 
as  I  was  standing  there,  a  man  near  by  me  thrust  his  hand 
into  his  coat  pocket,  drew  out  a  revolver,  aimed  it  at  one  of  the 
birds  over  our  head,  and  fired.  The  bird  fell,  turning  over  and 
over  as  he  fell  into  the  water,  and  was  beaten  down  under  the 
wheels  of  our  boat,  and  the  sportsman  dropped  his  pistol  back 
into  his  pocket.  At  the  same  time,  in  the  stern  of  the  boat,  a 
gentleman  was  feeding  these  same  birds  with  bread  and  cake 
out  of  a  traveling  basket;  they  followed  at  a  respectful  dis- 
tance after  the  boat,  and  as  he  cast  the  bread  upon  the  waters 
they  hovered  over  it  a  moment,  flying  round  and  round  in 
circles,  dropped  down  into  the  water  with  a  beautiful  sweep, 
rested  a  moment  on  the  waves,  and  then  rose  again  with  their 
prize. 


POLITICS  101 

We  traveled  all  day  long  through  Virginia,  all  night  through 
North  Carolina,  all  day  Wednesday  and  all  night  too  through 
South  Carolina,  arriving  at  Augusta,  Georgia,  Thursday  morn- 
ing at  about  daybreak,  having  traveled  sixty  hours  without 
cessation  except  long  enough  for  hurried  meals.  In  Virginia 
we  took  on  board  two  objects  of  interest  to  me :  a  car-load  of 
negroes  in  charge  of  a  trader,  and  a  sick  man  going  home  from 
college,  probably  to  die.  South  Carolina,  at  least  the  region 
traversed  by  railway,  is  the  most  miserable  country  I  ever  saw. 
It  is  an  interminable  pine  forest  of  dead  or  dying  trees  growing 
in  a  miserable  swamp.  If  the  forest  were  a  fresh  green  forest, 
it  would  be  less  tedious.  But  there  was  nothing  in  it  but  a 
skeleton  of  vegetation.  Swamp,  swamp,  swamp,  all  day  long. 
No  villages,  no  houses,  no  inhabitants,  no  green  fields,  nothing 
but  an  interminable  swamp.  Every  half -hour  we  stop  in  the 
middle  of  the  swamp.  Four  or  five  negroes  jump  off  the  train 
and  pile  on  some  water-logged  timber,  cut  and  lying  in  the 
swamp  by  the  side  of  the  road,  and  then  we  go  on  again.  We 
creep  at  a  snail's  pace.  For  the  engine  is  broken,  and  the 
chances  are  that  it  will  come  to  pieces  if  we  go  over  ten  or 
fifteen  miles  an  hour.  It  gives  me,  however,  the  acquain- 
tance of  the  sick  man's  friend.  .  .  .  My  acquaintance  is 
a  Virginian.  As  we  are  standing  by  the  door  talking,  it 
opens,  and  one  of  the  traders  who  has  a  cargo  of  "niggers" 
on  board  comes  in.  When  he  is  out  of  hearing,  my  Virginia 
friend  says: — 

"That  is  the  bad  thing  about  slavery." 

"What?" 

"These  cursed  traders." 

I  am  afraid  he  used  a  stronger  word.  For  I  scarcely  talked 
with  any  one  from  the  time  I  left  New  York  who  did  not  swear 
habitually.  "  But  it  is  a  necessary  evil,"  said  he.  "  Sometimes 
a  nigger  won't  behave  himself,  or  once  in  a  while  a  master  fails 
and  has  to  sell  his  slaves.  But  no  one  respects  the  traders  or 
will  have  anything  to  do  wdth  them.  They  can't  go  into  so- 
ciety.    Everybody  despises  them." 

The  trader  looks  like  a  pleasant  man  and  seems  like  an  un- 
pleasant one.  He  has  pleasant  features  but  an  unpleasant 
face.  From  your  friend's  remarks  you  suppose  that  such 
commerce  in  negroes  is  not  much.     "Once  in  a  while"  and 


102  REMINISCENCES 

"sometimes,"  you  understood,  such  sales  take  place,  and,  as 
you  want  to  see  all  of  slavery  you  can,  you  consider  yourself 
fortunate  to  have  been  on  this  special  train.  You  notice,  how- 
ever, before  you  get  home  that  every  train  going  south  has 
just  such  a  crowd  of  slaves  on  board,  twenty  or  more,  and  a 
"nigger  car,"  which  is  very  generally  also  the  smoking-car,  and 
sometimes  the  baggage-car.  You  notice  also  that  these  slaves 
whom  you  constantly  meet  going  south  in  the  trader's  hands 
are  not  old  men  and  women  or  by  any  means  malicious-looking 
ones,  as  you  would  naturally  expect  from  your  friend's  account, 
but  are  for  the  most  part  apparently  picked  slaves,  boys  and 
girls  or  young  men  and  women,  eighteen,  twenty,  twenty -five. 
Imagine  for  a  moment,  my  dear  Franc,  that  while  in  Georgia 
I  had  been  kidnapped  and  sold  into  Louisiana  as  a  slave,  and 
that  any  resistance  on  my  part  would  be  death  to  me,  and  that 
no  interference  on  your  part  would  meet  with  any  other  result 
than  taunts  and  perhaps  blows  to  you;  — and  hate  the  ac- 
cursed system  that  separates  those  who  love  each  other  quite 
as  well  as  do  you  and  I,  as  you  would  hate  those  who 
had  kidnapped  me  and  interposed  a  life-long  barrier  between 
us. 

But  then  these  negroes  do  not  feel  these  things  as  we  do! 
They  are  an  altogether  inferior  race  of  beings  and  have  no 
strong  affections!  My  Virginian  friend  gave  me  a  striking 
illustration  of  this.  He  was  from  the  University  of  Virginia, 
with  which  is  connected  a  medical  school.  The  scholars  of  the 
medical  school  are  accustomed  to  take  the  bodies  of  the  negroes 
from  the  negro  burial-ground  for  dissection.  Whether  this  is 
expressly  allowed  by  law  or  is  winked  at  by  the  authorities  I 
did  not  learn.  The  negroes,  to  avoid  this,  always  have  a  mock 
funeral  when  one  of  their  number  dies.  In  funeral  procession 
and  with  funeral  ceremonies  they  accompany  an  empty  coffin 
to  their  burying-ground  and  lower  it  into  the  grave  which  has 
been  prepared.  Afterwards,  under  the  cover  of  the  darkness  of 
the  night,  two  or  three  of  them  bury  secretly  the  body  of  their 
friend,  hiding  it  wherever  they  can  find  six  feet  of  earth  in 
which  there  is  hope  that  it  may  remain  undisturbed.  So  far 
from  the  negroes  having  less  feeling  than  the  Anglo-Saxons,  I 
think  they  are  a  race  much  less  phlegmatic  and  philosophical, 
much  more  a  race  of  strong  feelings  and  warm  hearts. 


POLITICS  103 

How  far  away  that  time  seems!  Then  there  was  no 
national  currency;  I  had  to  buy  gold  for  my  journey  as 
if  I  were  going  to  Europe.  Now  a  national-bank  bill  is 
taken  anywhere  in  the  United  States,  and  in  many  of 
the  larger  cities  in  Europe,  as  the  equivalent  of  gold. 
Then  the  journey  from  New  York  to  Atlanta  took  sixty 
hours;  now  it  is  made  by  the  fastest  train  in  twenty- 
four  hours.  Then  the  journey  was  taken  in  wearisome 
discomfort;  now  in  a  luxury  of  travel  unsurpassed  in  any 
nation  in  the  world.  Then  it  took  me  through  a  coun- 
try which  I  have  described;  now  to  the  same  country 
thousands  of  pleasure-seekers  and  health-seekers  go 
every  winter  for  recreation  or  recuperation.  Then  the 
community  was  burdened  by  an  industrial  system 
equally  demoralizing  to  the  white  race  and  to  the  black. 
Now,  in  spite  of  the  ravages  of  the  Civil  War  and  the 
paralyzing  effect  of  the  reconstruction  period,  the  eco- 
nomic and  educational  prosperity  of  the  South  rivals 
that  of  any  other  section  in  the  Union.  The  progress, 
both  material  and  spiritual,  in  this  country,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  South,  during  the  last  sixty  years  has  had 
no  parallel  in  any  other  epoch  or  in  any  other  country 
on  the  globe. 

This  trip  enabled  me  to  realize,  better  than  I  had 
before,  the  fighting  mood  of  the  South.  The  Pro-Slavery 
party  had  been  accustomed  to  threaten  disunion  if 
slavery  were  interfered  with,  if  the  anti-slavery  agita- 
tion did  not  cease,  if  the  slaveholder  were  not  allowed 
to  take  his  slaves  with  him  into  the  national  Territo- 
ries, if,  finally,  he  were  not  allowed  to  take  them  with 
him  into  the  Northern  States.  The  Unionists  feared 
the  execution  of  these  threats  and  gave  them  circula- 
tion throughout  the  North.  The  anti-slavery  leaders 
did  not  take  them  seriously.   Prophets  as  sober-minded 


/ 


104  REMINISCENCES 

as  Theodore  Parker  and  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  politi- 
cians as  shrewd  as  William  H.  Seward,  scouted  the  idea 
of  civil  war.  As  late  as  November,  1860,  after  the  elec- 
tion of  Mr.  Lincoln,  Mr.  Beecher  said:  "It  is  absurd  to 
suppose  that  the  South  with  all  her  interest  in  the  Union 
will  leave  it,  and  therefore,  I  say,  the  South  will  never 
leave  the  Union." 

This  optimism  I  did  not  share.  In  my  uncle's  school 
were  many  Southern  girls,  and,  though  I  do  not  remem- 
ber ever  to  have  discussed  the  slavery  question  with 
them,  I  appreciated  the  sincerity  and  passionate  in- 
tensity of  their  convictions.  I  honored  then,  as  I  do 
now,  the  intelligence  and  patriotism  of  Henry  Clay  and 
Daniel  Webster,  and  could  not  treat  their  warnings 
with  contempt.  As  early  as  March,  1856, 1  wrote  to  my 
cousin :  — 

I  was  offered  a  Sharp's  rifle  the  other  day  if  I  would  go  to 
Kansas.  What  do  you  think  of  that,  Franc?  I  do  not  much 
think,  however,  that  I  will  have  to  go  to  Kansas  to  labor  for 
freedom  or  even  to  fight  for  it.  I  shall  not  be  surprised  to  live 
to  see  a  civil  war.  There  must  be  a  civil  war  or  slavery  must 
yield  without  a  blow.  And  I  am  not  sufficiently  sanguine  to 
hope  for  that. 

This  prophecy  of  impending  war  I  repeated  in  a  sub- 
sequent letter.  But  this  prospect  had  no  tendency  to 
drive  me  into  the  Unionist  party.  I  believed  that  the 
conflict  was  one  to  be  settled  not  by  a  compromise  but  by 
the  clear  apprehension  of  a  principle  and  courageous  ad- 
herence to  it,  and  that  principle  I  believed  to  be  summed 
up  in  the  single  sentence  —  Slavery  sectional;  liberty 
national.  I  was  ready  for  the  battle  if  battle  there  must 
be.  I  was  even  at  times  eager  to  join  the  band  of  North- 
ern immigrants  to  Kansas  and  Nebraska.  That  might 
have  been,  perhaps  was,  a  mere  boyish  enthusiasm.   But 


POLITICS  105 

it  interests  me  to  discover  that  I  had  thus  early  made 
my  choice  between  government  over  the  people  and  gov- 
ernment hy  the  people  —  a  choice  which  has  controlled 
all  my  writing  on  political  and  industrial  topics  for  more 
than  half  a  century.  Whether  in  industry  I  have  advo- 
cated trade-unionism  or  government  ownership  of 
public  utilities  or  profit-sharing  or  cooperative  enter- 
prises —  whether  in  politics  I  have  favored  the  Demo- 
cratic party  or  the  Republican  party  or  the  Progressive 
party,  the  principle  which  has  always  determined  my 
choice  has  been  the  principle  of  government  by  the 
many  in  opposition  to  government  by  the  few.  I  ap- 
prove the  short  ballot  and  the  direct  primary  because 
I  believe  they  will  increase  the  political  power  of  the  / 
many.  I  oppose  woman  suffrage  because  I  believe  an 
overwhelming  majority  of  women  do  not  wish  to  assume 
the  political  responsibilities  which  would  go  with  it, 
and  I  believe  the  question  should  be  decided  hy  them, 
not  for  them.  The  letter  which  thus  gives  the  key  to 
my  political  principles  is  as  follows :  — 

If  I  was  robust  enough  and  knew  how  to  use  a  pistol  or  rifle 
(I  could  learn  that  though),  I  would  like  extremely  to  go  to 
Kansas.  If  it  were  not  for  you,  I  think  the  chances  are  even 
that  I  should  go.  The  old  battle  —  Hampden  fought  in  it, 
Cromwell  fought  in  it,  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  fought  in  it,  Wash- 
ington and  the  patriots  of  the  Revolution  fought  in  it  —  the 
old  contest  between  democracy  and  aristocracy,  government 
by  the  few  over  the  people  and  government  by  the  people  over 
themselves,  between  progression  and  retrogression,  is  to  be 
fought,  and  Kansas  will  be  one  battlefield  and  Congress  an- 
other. For  one,  I  want  to  be  in  the  battle.  My  greatest  fear 
is  that  it  may  be  over  before  I  am  old  enough  to  carry  arms. 
I  hope  not.  And  I  believe  not.  Did  you  never  envy  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers  their  opportunities  for  stern  self-denial;  or  the 
Revolutionary  patriots  for  heroic  patriotism.''  I  have,  often. 
But  I  believe,  if  there  be  any  truth  in  the  signs  of  the  times,  that 


106  REMINISCENCES 

we  shall  see  quite  as  rare  opportunities  for  stern  self-denial 
and  heroic  patriotism  as  they.  Are  you  ready  for  the  battle. 
Franc?  It  is  too  late  to  pray  for  peace.  The  war  has  already 
begun.  Besides,  for  my  part,  I  have  no  heart  to  pray  for  it. 
There  can  be  no  final  peace  except  in  extermination  of  one  or 
the  other,  nothing  but  a  temporary  armistice.  And  if  the 
battle  is  to  be  fought  I  want  to  be  one  to  help  fight  it. 

That  this  desire  to  go  to  Kansas  to  take  part  in  the 
conflict  was  something  more  than  a  mere  boyish  fancy 
is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  I  consulted  with  my  father 
about  it.  That  I  did  not  go  was  partly  due  to  his  wise 
counsel,  partly  to  my  unwillingness  to  put  a  thousand 
miles  and  more  between  myself  and  my  cousin.  In  July, 
1856,  I  wrote:  — 

I  have  had  quite  a  long  conversation  with  father  to-night 
about  my  duties  in  the  coming  contest.  As  I  had  expected, 
he  reins  me  in.  The  best  way  to  become  an  active  worker  in 
the  anti-slavery  struggle  is  first  to  obtain  influence,  then  to 
use  it.  And  the  way  to  obtain  influence  is  to  attain  an  influ- 
ential position  as  a  lawyer  by  a  close  attention  to  business, 
exerting  such  anti-slavery  influence  as  in  the  course  of  that 
business  I  can  naturally.  Then,  having  acquired  influence 
through  business  success,  strike,  with  all  the  power  that  gives, 
a  blow  for  liberty,  and  it  will  be  a  blow  that  will  tell.  It  is 
rather  conservative  advice  to  be  altogether  agreeable  to  me. 
But  with  this  modification,  namely,  that  I  study  so  as  to  direct 
my  energies  to  striking  that  blow,  I  think  perhaps  it  is  sound. 

This  counsel  I  accepted,  but  it  did  not  abate  my  in- 
terest in  politics.  In  1856  Buchanan  was  nominated  by 
the  Democratic  party,  because  it  was  thought  he  would 
carry  Pennsylvania,  and  Fremont  was  nominated  by 
the  newly  organized  Republican  party  because  it  was 
thought  his  romantic  career  would  create  a  popular 
enthusiasm  for  him  and  his  cause.  Both  surmises  were 
correct.      Buchanan    carried    Pennsylvania    and    was 


POLITICS  107 

elected;  but  the  enthusiasm  for  Fremont  brought  him 
over  a  million  and  a  third  of  votes,  an  astonishing  result 
for  a  party  just  created.  That  campaign  is  now  past 
history;  its  leader  is  forgotten;  his  nomination  is  ac- 
counted by  sober  historians  a  mistake.  And  yet  I  ven- 
ture to  doubt  whether  the  election  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
would  have  been  possible  but  for  the  public  interest 
awakened  four  years  before  by  the  campaign  cry  echoed 
throughout  the  North:  "Free  soil,  free  speech,  free  press, 
free  men,  Fre-mont."  I  shouted  that  campaign  cry  with 
the  loudest  and  did  such  work  for  our  leader's  election  as 
could  be  done  by  a  boy  yet  under  age.  That  boy's  de- 
scription of  a  Fremont  meeting  may  give  the  reader  a 
little  idea  of  the  popular  enthusiasm :  — 

Thursday,  June  26. 

I  went  last  night  to  a  concert  at  Spingler.  There  I  met 
Walter  Philbrook.  About  half-past  nine  we  left  the  house  to 
come  home  together.  On  our  way  we  were  to  pass  the  Taber- 
nacle. There  the  Republicans  held  a  grand  ratification  meet- 
ing. We  went  in.  Such  a  crowd  of  men!  Here  and  there  a 
lady  —  but  few  and  far  between.  The  New  York  Tabernacle 
is  something  like  the  Tremont  Temple  in  Boston.  In  the  seats 
behind  the  platform  are  a  band.  On  the  stage  is  a  man  walk- 
ing back  and  forth.  Almost  every  sentence  is  followed  with  an 
interruption  —  a  cheer  —  applause  —  or  a  remark  from  the 
audience.  Presently  he  finishes.  Then  there  is  tremendous 
confusion  all  over  the  house.  "Procession!  procession!  pro- 
cession! Hamlin!  Hamlin!  Hamlin!"  the  shoutings  might 
be  heard  half  a  mile.  For  the  hall  is  crowded  to  overflowing  — 
to  overflowing  into  the  street  and  passageways  outside  —  to 
such  an  overflowing  that  a  little  earlier  in  the  evening  there 
were  two  more  meetings  of  outsiders  there.  When  at  length 
order  is  restored,  another  speaker  is  introduced.  His  speech, 
however,  comes  to  an  abrupt  termination  by  reason  of  the  fact 
that  everybody  is  going  out  to  form  in  a  procession  to  go  up  to 
Fremont's  house.  Walter  and  I  are  carried  downstairs  in  the 
crowd.    What  a  jam!    I  am  run  alongside  the  wall.    I  press 


108  REMINISCENCES 

with  all  my  might  against  it  (sometimes  with  both  hands)  to 
prevent  being  bruised  against  it.  If  I  should  trip  and  fall! 
My  best  friend  would  not  know  me  when  taken  up,  I  should 
be  so  trodden  under  foot.  Ah !  Here  we  are  fairly  out  in  the 
street.  Whew !  What  a  crowd  —  how  hot  —  how  nice  the 
cool  evening  air  is  after  that  crowded  and  stifled  room!  The 
procession  is  already  in  progression.  It  forms  as  fast  as  the 
materials  for  it  come  out.  The  "Times"  this  morning  says 
it  is  eight  thousand  strong.  We  march  five  to  ten  abreast 
up  Broadway.  The  band  is  far  ahead  —  almost  out  of  hear- 
ing. Walter  and  I  leave  our  ranks  and  run  forward  nearer  the 
band.  Here  we  join  another  rank.  "Hurrah !  hurrah !  hurrah !" 
"Once  more.  Three  for  Fremont!"  "Hurrah!  hurrah!  hur- 
rah!" Here  we  are  opposite  the  St.  Nicholas  Hotel.  "Three 
more  for  a  sensation."  "Hurrah!  hurrah!  hurrah!"  At  that 
open  window  there,  to  the  right,  are  three  ladies  waving  their 
handkerchiefs  to  us.  "Three  for  them."  "Hurrah!  hurrah! 
hurrah!"  So  we  go  up  Broadway  arm  in  arm,  a  long  pro- 
cession, hurrahing,  shouting,  clapping  sometimes  altogether 
■ —  anything  to  be  enthusiastic.  Here  we  are  in  sight  of  Fre- 
mont's house.  The  procession  breaks  up,  and  we  all  rush 
frantically  forward  to  get  good  positions,  and  in  a  moment 
are  in  a  worse  crowd  than  ever  before.  "Off  my  toes  there!" 
"Don't  put  your  arms  through  my  back,  if  you  please,  sir." 
"Hats  off!"  "Order!  order!  order!"  "Which  is  the  house.?" 
"Where  is  he?"  "Which  one?"  "Where?"  The  marble 
house  there  with  the  piazza  is  the  one.  What  a  crowd  on  the 
balcony !    What  if  the  balcony  should  give  way  — 

Merciful  God !  It  has.  It  gives  way  and  falls  to  the  ground 
with  a  crash.  The  crowd  is  hushed  in  a  moment.  But  only  a 
part  is  fallen.  A  shout  from  the  balcony,  "Nobody  hurt!" 
What  a  deafening  shout  of  joy  from  the  whole  crowd  responds 
to  the  intelligence! 

Merciful  is  God  indeed;  that  the  cracking  of  the  balustrade 
should  have  given  warning  to  those  above;  that  the  formation 
of  the  house  should  have  been  such  that  none  of  this  immense 
crowd  were  directly  beneath.  So,  though  the  balcony  is  of 
heavy  iron  and  the  crowd  beneath  counts  by  thousands,  no 
one  is  hurt. 

Now  Colonel  Fremont  comes  out  to  speak.     But  he  is 


POLITICS  109 

cheered  so  much  and  so  long  you  can  catch  only  little  pieces  of 
what  he  is  saying.  Then  there  are  more  hurrahs.  Then  some 
one  cries  out :  — 

"Mrs.  Fremont!" 

The  crowd  catches  the  idea  In  a  moment.  "Mrs.  Fremont! 
Madam  Fremont!    Jessie!    Jessie!    Give  us  Jessie!" 

Nobody  in  the  crowd  calls  for  Mrs.  Fremont  louder  than  I. 

Some  one  on  the  balcony  begins  an  inaudible  speech. 

"Order!    order!    hshshshshshshshsh ! " 

Man  in  the  Balcony.  "Such  occasions  as  this  are  apt  to 
disconcert  ladies.  Three  more  for  Fremont  and  then  dis- 
perse!" 

The  three  more  are  given  with  right  good  will,  but  they  are 
mingled  with  cries  of  "Mrs.  Fremont!  Give  us  Mrs.  Fremont 
and  we  '11  go ! "  and  the  like.  There  is  no  sign  of  any  inclina- 
tion to  disperse. 

My  belief  is  that  Mrs.  Fremont  has  no  objection  to  coming 
out,  but  desires  to  delay  enough  to  be  proper.  For  a  lady  to 
make  her  appearance  before  a  political  crowd  like  this  is  an 
innovation.  Mrs.  Fremont  will  not  make  it,  of  course.  There 
is  no  objection  to  the  crowd's  making  it.  So  I  shout  with  the 
loudest,  "Mrs.  Fremont!    Madam  Fremont!" 

Proper  man  in  the  crowd  next  me.  "No!  no!  hsh!  hsh! 
What  do  you  do  that  for?" 

/.    "If  Mrs.  Fremont  can  see  company,  why  should  n't  — " 

My  sentence  is  interrupted  by  a  universal  shout.  Mrs.  Fre- 
mont appears  on  the  balcony  between  two  gentlemen.  Proper 
man's  hat  goes  off  in  a  moment.  Proper  man  has  a  louder 
voice  than  I  have,  and  I  cannot  even  hear  myself  cheer  —  he 
quite  drowns  my  voice.  The  crowd  are  crazy  with  enthu- 
siasm. They  sway  to  and  fro.  They  are  bareheaded  almost 
to  a  man,  cheering  with  hats  in  hand  in  the  air.  The  sight  of 
such  a  vast  crowd  as  this,  with  every  man's  hat  in  his  hand 
above  his  head,  is  curious  enough.  Here  and  there  a  man  with 
a  cane  or  umbrella  puts  his  hat  on  that,  elevates  it,  and  cheers. 
A  few  whose  hats,  like  mine,  are  fastened  on,  wave  their  hand- 
kerchiefs. The  whole  crowd,  eight  thousand  strong,  cheer  as 
though  all  their  previous  cheering  were  a  mere  practice  to 
train  their  voices  for  this  occasion.  Then  Mrs.  Fremont  re- 
tires, and,  with  three  more  for  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Fremont,  the 


110  REMINISCENCES 

crowd  disentangles  itself,  and  Walter  and  I  walk  out  to  the  cars 
and  ride  home. 

The  Fremont  and  Dayton  ratification  meeting  was  a  great 
success. 

As  the  election  drew  near  there  were  tickets  to  be 
printed  and  distributed,  votes  to  be  looked  after,  re- 
peaters to  be  guarded  against,  frauds  to  be  discovered 
and  defeated.  The  day  before  the  election  I  wrote  my 
cousin :  — 

We  have  just  learned  that  the  Democratic  party  and  leaders 
have  just  struck  off  two  thousand  Republican  tickets  with  all 
the  names  spelled  wrong  so  that  they  may  not  be  counted  as 
good  for  anything.  We  must  see  to  it,  not  only  that  we  have 
none  of  them,  but  also  that  none  are  successfully  used  at  the 
polls  to-morrow. 

When  the  election  day  came  my  brothers  Vaughan  and 
Edward  and  myself  were  at  the  polls  from  sunrise  to 
sunset,  and  after  the  day's  work  was  over  I  wrote  again 
to  my  cousin  the  following  letter  describing  our  ex- 
periences :  — 

Benjamin  Vaughan  has  positively  blistered  his  feet  in  run- 
ning from  poll  to  poll  looking  after  the  election.  At  my 
polling-booth  there  was  no  one  else  to  take  direction  of  affairs, 
so  I  took  charge.  I  place  one  man  at  one  end  of  the  block  and 
another  at  the  other.  Two  others  stand  about  the  door.  That 
rough-looking  fellow  in  an  old  yellow  coat  is  the  best  worker 
we  have.  He  paces  back  and  forth  vociferating  at  the  top  of 
his  voice,  "Here's  your  regular  Republican  tickets.  Free 
speech,  free  soil,  free  press,  free  men,  and  Fremont."  He  dis- 
poses of  three  handfuls  of  tickets  during  the  day.  The  rest  of 
us  are  more  quiet.  As  soon  as  they  are  well  going  I  start  for 
another  district,  for  we  have  enough  men  and  to  spare  here; 
and  for  the  rest  of  the  day  I  am  for  [the  most  part  going 
from  poll  to  poll  —  except  when  in  the  course  of  my  travels  I 
come  to  a  desperately  Irish  Deiriocracy  region,  where  for  a 
long  while  I  cannot  find  any  Republican.    I  work  here  some- 


POLITICS  111 

thing  over  an  hour,  and  only  get  two  tickets  ofiF  my  hands. 
Whether  either  of  these  is  voted  or  not  I  much  doubt. 

Over  in  New  York  Austin,  too,  is  at  the  polls  all  the  day. 
There  they  have  some  quasi  riots,  considerable  fighting,  and 
an  immense  amount  of  fraudulent  voting.  They  vote  mostly 
in  bar-rooms,  and  the  Irish  fill  them  up  and  let  no  man  in  to 
vote  who  does  not  vote  the  Democratic  ticket.  The  Fremont 
and  Dayton  Central  Union  send  men  to  the  polls  to  do  what 
they  can,  but  one  man  to  fifty  Irishmen  is  at  a  disadvantage, 
and  they  cannot  accomplish  a  great  deal.  They  are  attacked, 
knocked  down,  beaten,  and  some  of  them  almost  killed  before 
the  day  is  over.  Mr.  Shearman's  adventures  ^  (Austin  had 
them  from  his  own  lips)  were  spicy  —  to  relate.  He  was  sent 
to  the  Sixth  Ward,  so  notorious  even  in  New  York  for  its  riots 
on  election  day  that  it  rejoices  in  the  sobriquet  of  the  "  Bloody 
Sixth."  On  the  morning  of  election  he  tried  to  get  a  pistol  but 
could  not  obtain  one,  so  he  purchased  a  pepper-box  with  per- 
forated top,  and  filled  it  with  red  pepper,  and  put  it  in  a  side 
pocket,  and  with  this  for  his  only  weapon  of  defense  went  to 
the  polls.  The  room  was  packed,  of  course,  as  full  as  it  would 
hold  of  Irishmen,  so  that  there  was  no  possibility  of  egress  or 
ingress.  Shearman  edged  his  way  through  the  door  and  a  little 
way  into  the  room.  Then,  quietly  producing  his  pepper-box, 
he  scattered  a  portion  of  its  contents  through  the  room:  all 
this,  of  course,  quietly  and  unobserved.  This  made  such  a 
sneezing  as  soon  separates  the  crowd  and  gives  a  considerably 
freer  passage  than  before.  Then  he  goes  to  work  distributing 
Fremont  tickets.  This  is  dangerous  business  in  the  "Bloody 
Sixth."  However,  by  carefully  avoiding  collision  he  escapes 
difiiculty  until  toward  evening.  Then  as  he  is  at  work  in  the 
poll-room  some  one  fires  a  pistol  at  him.  He  thinks  there  was 
no  ball  in  it.  He  did  not  hear  it  strike.  At  all  events,  it  did  not 
strike  him.  As  he  turns  around  to  face  his  attackers  he  sees 
another  man  after  him  with  a  bowie  knife.  Pleasant!  He 
starts.  The  man  after  him.  It  is  a  race  for  life.  His  pursuer 
gains  on  him.  As  he  runs  he  puts  one  hand  on  the  pepper-box. 
His  pursuer  is  close  upon  his  heels.  Catching  with  the  other 
hand  by  a  lamp-post,  he  adroitly  dodges  around  it  and  with 

^  Mr.  Thomas  G.  Shearman,  who  began  his  legal  career  as  a  clerk  in  my 
brother's  law  office,  and  was  my  lifelong  personal  friend. 


112  REMINISCENCES 

the  other  throws  a  good  charge  of  the  cayenne  pepper  full  in 
his  pursuer's  face.  The  man  dropped  his  knife  in  a  wink, 
stopped  at  the  second,  and  with  tears  in  his  eyes  rubbed  the 
cayenne  pepper  from  his  face,  went  back  disconsolately,  and 
left  Mr.  Shearman  alone. 

Such  was  an  election  in  New  York  City  in  1856;  such 
was  political  campaigning  fifty-seven  years  ago.  Re- 
formers have  not  lived  and  labored  in  vain.  There  is 
still  room  for  improvement  and  need  of  political  cour- 
\j  age  to  accomplish  it.  But  the  conditions  which  I  de- 
scribed to  my  cousin  in  1856  could  not  be  duplicated 
anywhere  in  America  in  1913. 


CHAPTER  VI 

A   TURNING-POINT   IN   MY   LIFE 

I  NOW  approach  two  events  which  exerted  a  greater 
influence  on  both  my  character  and  my  career  than 
any  other  events  in  my  life  —  my  marriage  and  the 
change  in  my  profession. 

My  letters  to  my  cousin,  written  between  my  engage- 
ment in  1854  and  my  marriage  in  1857,  give  a  more 
frank  and  a  less  self-conscious  account  of  myself,  my 
habits,  and  my  character  than  would  have  been  con- 
tained in  any  journal  —  if  I  had  kept  one,  which  I  did 
not  do.  I  wished  my  cousin  to  have  no  false  ideals  of 
me;  and  I  endeavored  to  describe  myseK  as  I  was,  that 
when  she  took  me  for  better  and  for  worse,  she  might 
not  be  too  much  surprised  at  the  worse.  With  these 
letters  before  me,  I  attempt  to  give  to  my  readers  some- 
thing of  the  self-painted  portraits  which  I  gave  to  her. 
The  quotations  are  from  these  letters.^  The  first  one, 
looking  back  to  my  boyhood,  confirms  the  dim  reminis- 
cence which  I  have  given  to  the  reader  in  the  first  chapter 
of  this  volume. 

Brooklyn,  New  York,  December  20,  1855. 

I  am  twenty  years  of  age.  To  say  that  I  do  not  realize  it, 
would  not  begin  to  express  my  want  of  conception  of  who  I  now 
am  and  who  I  used  to  be.  Even  now  as  I  walk  the  room  I 
cannot  conceive  who  I  am  that  am  twenty  years  old.    I  think 

^  I  make  no  attempt  to  correct  the  infelicities  of  expression  or  even  the 
inaccuracies  of  grammar  in  these  letters,  but  print  them  as  they  were  written, 
often  in  haste,  and  generally  without  revision. 


114  REMINISCENCES 

of  some  one,  whom  I  know  pretty  well,  a  young  fellow  with 
whom  I  am  pretty  intimately  acquainted  named  Lyman 
Abbott,  who,  I  understand,  is  about  that  age.  But  to  imagine 
that  I  am  he  or  that  I  am  I,  I  cannot  conceive.  I  remember  a 
school-boy,  pale,  meek,  mild,  never  doing  anything  very  wrong, 
nor  anything  very  right,  nor  anything  indeed  at  all,  punished 
by  the  teachers  for  other  boys'  escapades,  and  by  the  scholars 
for  not  going  into  the  scrapes,  a  little  too  big  to  associate  with 
the  little  boys  and  rather  too  little  to  associate  with  the  big 
boys.  I  remember  such  a  boy  as  this  whose  name  was  Lyman 
Abbott,  not  as  anybody  I  ever  knew  particularly,  but  as  I  re- 
member a  hastily  half-read  novel.  Nor  does  my  life  so  far 
seem,  as  I  thought  it  would,  a  diorama,  connected  together  — 
one  whole.  There  are  disjointed  pictures  here  and  there.  A 
disconsolate  picture  of  a  boy  at  school.  A  picture  of  a  pale, 
quiet,  tolerably  inoffensive  youth  at  college.  A  picture  of  a 
tolerably  impudent  (not  yet  intolerably  so)  and  go-ahead 
young  man  of  considerable  self-assurance,  and,  I  am  afraid,  not 
a  great  deal  to  support  it,  and  this  is  a  bright  picture,  of  the 
present;  bright  —  not  because  it  is  pleasant  but  compara- 
tively distinct. 

My  daguerreotype,  taken  at  about  twenty  years  of 
age,  shows  a  slim  youth,  with  black  hair  and  mustache 
and  the  beginnings  of  a  beard  and  whiskers;  for  I  have 
never  shaved  —  an  abstinence  which  has  saved  me  a 
good  deal  of  time  and  not  a  little  vexation  of  spirit.  My 
eyes  were  blue,  but  were  so  dark  that  they  were  taken 
by  one  of  my  cousin's  friends  to  be  "piercing  black  eyes." 
I  was  ambitious,  and  glad  of  it,  for  I  regarded  ambition 
as  a  virtue,  not  a  vice.  "A  person  of  no  ambition  will 
stay  where  he  is;  a  person  ambitious  to  go  back  will  be 
very  likely  to  degenerate.  While  a  person  ambitious  for 
the  future  must  progress  somewhat."  This  ambition 
my  engagement  had  increased.  "For  your  sake,"  I 
wrote,  "I  want  to  know  something,  to  do  something,  to 
achieve  something.  I  am  proud  of  you.  I  am  very  am- 
bitious that  you  should  have  some  reason  to  be  proud 


LYMAN  ABBOTT   ABOUT   1855 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  115 

of  me."  But  this  ambition,  if  I  read  myself  aright,  was 
not  for  honor  but  for  achievement.  As  I  put  it  at  the 
time,  "I  wanted  to  do,  perform,  produce  some  great 
effects,  and  whether  any  one  else  knew  I  did  it  or  not, 
that  is  quite  another  matter."  To  what  others  might 
think  of  me  I  was,  however,  by  no  means  indifferent. 
But  it  was  honest  and  intelligent  criticism  I  cared  for, 
or  thought  I  cared  for.  When  "Cone  Cut  Corners,"  our 
novel,  was  published,  I  wrote,  and  underlined  the  sen- 
tence: "/  care  more  to  know  what  people  than  what  papers 
say  about  it.'* 

I  was  a  hard  worker;  but  fitful  and  irregular,  some- 
times working  till  two  or  three  in  the  morning,  sometimes 
going  to  bed  early  and  working  one  or  two  hours  before 
breakfast.  Not  till  the  latter  part  of  this  epoch  did  I 
definitely  form  the  habit,  which,  with  rare  exceptions, 
I  have  kept  up  ever  since,  of  stopping  my  work  at  supper. 
I  have  found  the  early  morning  hours  the  best  for  com- 
position; and  for  many  years  have  rarely  done  any  work 
in  the  evening,  except  in  public  addresses  and  social  en- 
gagements. I  took  no  systematic  exercise,  except  the 
walk  to  and  from  the  office,  a  matter  of  probably  two 
miles  a  day.  I  do  not  think  there  were  gymnasiums  in 
those  days;  if  there  were,  I  never  belonged  to  one.  But 
my  professional  duties  kept  me  much  of  the  time  in 
action  —  in  making  calls,  hunting  for  witnesses,  or  going 
from  court  to  court;  I  had  comparatively  little  desk 
work. 

My  recreations  I  took  rather  seriously.  I  neither 
danced  nor  played  cards,  and  after  I  joined  the  church 
very  rarely  went  to  the  theater.  I  went  to  all  sorts  of 
concerts,  from  "Buckley's  Serenaders"  to  the  Italian 
opera,  the  Philharmonic  concerts,  or  the  Oratorio  So- 
ciety.  I  did  not  then,  and  have  not  since,  found  much 


116  REMINISCENCES 

pleasure  in  any  sort  of  games;  a  defect  in  my  character 
which  I  have  mildly  regretted,  but  never  sufficiently  to 
set  myself  the  task  of  correcting  it. 

Occasionally,  however,  I  went  oflF  on  outdoor  excur- 
sions with  companions  —  sometimes  a  fishing  expedi- 
tion in  the  country,  sometimes  simply  a  tramp.  One  of 
these  excursions  has  an  interest  for  me  on  account  of 
its  relation  to  my  subsequent  history.  The  afternoon 
before  the  Fourth  of  July  my  brothers  Austin  and  Ed- 
ward, my  cousin  Waldo,  and  I  got  on  a  steamboat  run- 
ning up  the  Hudson  River,  without  any  idea  where  we 
would  get  off  or  what  we  would  do  when  we  got  there. 
About  dusk,  at  the  first  landing  north  of  West  Point, 
we  left  the  steamboat,  walked  back  into  the  country 
three  or  four  miles,  found  a  boarding-house,  where,  after 
allaying  suspicion  by  an  offer  to  pay  for  our  entertain- 
ment in  advance,  we  were  cared  for  during  the  night. 
The  next  day,  after  a  tramp  of  some  six  miles  back  into 
the  country,  we  returned  to  the  river,  where,  as  I  wrote 
my  cousin,  "I  saw  just  the  place  you  and  I  are  going  to 
have  for  a  country  seat  by  and  by."  And  I  continued :  — 

Up  the  Hudson,  about  three  miles  above  West  Point,  under 
a  huge  rocky  peak,  half  a  mile  below  the  nearest  village  by 
water  and  about  five  miles  by  road  over  the  mountains,  on  the 
very  shore  of  the  river,  well  shaded  with  trees  and  surrounded 
by  some  fifteen  acres  of  good  land,  there  stands  an  antiquated 
old  farm-house,  our  country  seat  in  futuro.  A  magnificent 
great  forest  stretches  back  over  the  hills  and  comes  down  close 
on  the  water's  edge  except  where  it  has  been  cleared  away  by 
the  ax  to  make  room  for  the  house.  A  few  rods  farther  on 
down  the  river  is  another  house.  Then  another  magnificent 
rocky  mountain  cuts  off  all  approach  by  land.  Between  these 
two  great  guards  stand  these  two  houses,  quite  alone.  Across 
the  river  is  a  busy  town.  Three  miles  down  is  West  Point, 
crowded  with  fashion  all  summer  long.  The  steamboats  go  up 
and  down  all  day  long.    In  sight  is  one  of  the  best  built  and 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN   MY  LIFE  117 

fastest  railways  in  the  country,  and  here,  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  highest  civilization  and  in  sight  of  it,  we  are  five  miles 
from  any  human  habitation  by  any  accessible  road.  What 
do  you  think  of  my  country  seat,  cousin?  I  wish  you  could 
see  it. 

The  peak  was  Storm  King,  the  village  was  Cornwall; 
and  I  am  writing  this  autobiography  in  that  village,  in 
which,  thirteen  or  fourteen  years  later,  my  wife  and  I 
made  our  permanent  home. 

When  I  lived  with  my  brothers  and  my  cousin  Waldo 
lived  with  us,  as  at  one  time  was  the  case,  our  evenings 
at  home  were  not  infrequently  taken  for  an  intellectual 
tournament  at  which  all  sorts  of  topics,  practical  and 
theoretical,  were  used  to  sharpen  our  wits.  In  these 
tournaments  the  wives  took  equal  part  with  their  hus- 
bands. These  family  discussions  did  not  satiate  our 
appetite  for  debate,  and  we  all  belonged  to  a  literary 
and  social  society  called  the  Linden,  which  met  at  the 
houses  of  the  members,  I  believe,  once  a  fortnight.  Here, 
generally,  more  practical  topics  were  debated.  The 
literary  exercises  were  followed  by  a  dance,  before  which 
I  generally  went  home.  The  Linden  was  not  only  en- 
joyable, it  was  useful  in  keeping  up  the  practice  of  ex- 
temporaneous speaking. 

I  had  no  inclination  to  be  a  monk.  When  I  was  not 
at  work  on  some  law  case  in  the  evening,  I  was  likely  to 
be  out,  perhaps  at  a  concert  or  a  religious  or  political 
meeting,  perhaps  in  a  social  call.  At  one  time  I  went  up 
once  a  week  or  once  a  fortnight  to  call  at  the  Spingler 
Institute  in  Union  Square  —  my  letters  say  on  my  Aunt 
Rebecca,  but  I  suspect  the  young  ladies  were  an  added 
attraction.  I  have  never  smoked,  and,  though  I  at 
times  took  ale  or  porter  under  doctor's  counsel,  in  gen- 
eral practice  I  was  an  abstainer  from  both  fermented 


118  REMINISCENCES 

and  distilled  liquors.  I  was  an  earnest  advocate  of  pro- 
hibition. When  "Cone  Cut  Corners"  was  published,  I 
sent  a  copy  to  my  cousin,  accompanying  it  with  these 
two  sentences:  "If  you  like  it  as  a  good  novel,  it  is  a 
failure.  If  you  like  it  as  an  effective  Maine  law  preacher, 
it  is  a  success." 

At  that  time  I  recognized  the  fact  that  I  was  not  a 
great  student  nor  a  great  reader,  for  I  then  confessed: 
"I  wish  I  loved  to  read  more  than  I  do.  When  there  is 
anything  to  do,  I  would  rather  be  at  work  than  at  study." 
For  poetry  I  had  no  inclination  unless  I  read  it  with 
some  one  else.  But  such  reading  as  I  did  was  generally 
accompanied  with  some  reflection  upon  it;  and  I  wrote 
critiques  to  my  cousin  on  what  I  had  read  and  on  all 
sorts  of  books,  from  Macaulay's  "History"  to  Eugene 
Sue's  "Wandering  Jew." 

It  is  still  true  that  whatever  I  read,  unless  it  be  an  old 
and  familiar  piece  of  literature  or  the  very  lightest  love 
story  or  detective  story,  awakens  my  desire  to  express 
to  myself,  if  not  to  others,  my  own  thoughts  upon  the 
subject.  Perhaps  this  is  the  reason  why  reading  fails  as 
a  recreation.  To  me  it  is  almost  always  a  stimulant, 
not  a  sedative.  I  found  my  recreation  in  a  change  of 
employment;  did  a  good  deal  of  writing,  and  found  more 
pleasure  in  writing  fiction  than  in  reading  it.  And  yet 
composition  was  by  no  means  an  easy  task,  as  the  fol- 
lowing quotations  from  my  letters  indicate:  — 

I  have  to  write  a  thing  over  half  a  dozen  times  before  I  can 
get  it  into  any  sort  of  shape. 

In  writing  I  almost  invariably  walk  up  and  down  the  room 
forming  my  sentences,  then  sit  down  and  write  them  from  rec- 
ollection.   I  never  compose  as  I  write. 

I  always  imagine  an  audience  before  me  and  speak,  generally 
aloud,  what  I  am  to  write  before  I  write  it.  As  I  walk  the 
street  I  am  almost  always  thus  speaking  to  myself.    Not  in- 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  119 

frequently  I  find  myself  speaking  so  loud  and  accompanying 
my  thoughts  with  gestures  such  as  to  attract  considerable  at- 
tention on  the  part  of  the  passers-by. 

I  may  add,  in  passing,  that,  while  I  have  long  since 
broken  myself  of  the  habit  of  so  speaking  and  gesturing 
as  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  passer-by,  I  have 
throughout  my  life  composed  my  sermons,  addresses, 
and  editorials  on  the  street,  in  the  trolley,  in  the  train, 
and  used  my  pen  to  transcribe  on  paper  the  thoughts 
which  had  already  been  shaped  ready  for  utterance  in 
my  brain.  I  rarely  sit  down  at  my  desk  to  write  until 
the  theme  is  so  far  formulated  in  mind  that  I  could  de- 
liver it  as  an  extemporaneous  address  without  further 
preparation.  This  has  its  disadvantages.  It  has  made 
me  unobserving,  and  only  the  charity  of  my  friends  has 
prevented  them  from  taking  offense  at  my  passing  them 
without  recognition.  But  it  has  enabled  me  to  utilize 
what  otherwise  might  be  unused  time,  and  is  probably 
the  secret  of  the  reputation  which  my  editorial  asso- 
ciates give  to  me,  of  being  an  unusually  rapid  writer. 

My  room-mate,  who  ought  to  have  known  me  well, 
told  me  that  I  was  "cold-blooded,"  and  I  acknowledged 
that  "Perhaps  I  am  too  reserved.  It  runs  in  the  family. 
I  never  was  fully  acquainted  with  my  father."  But  this 
reserve  I  defended:  "I  have  a  repugnance  to  be  known 
and  understood  by  everybody.  I  do  not  like  to  have  my 
feelings  or  my  thoughts  every  one's  property."  "I  have 
feelings,  but  my  pen  cannot  and  will  not  write  feelings; 
nay,  my  heart  has  no  mind  that  can  coin  them  into 
words."  My  cousin's  pastor  had  come  into  a  great 
sorrow.     I  wrote :  — 

You  may  tell  him  of  my  sympathy  if  you  think  best.  Yet 
let  me  say  that  I  do  not.  I  think  that  the  less  of  sympathy  that 
is  spoken  on  such  occasions  the  better.   All  that  sympathy  that 


/y 


120  REMINISCENCES 

shows  itself  by  action  is  another  matter.  Every  step  that  is 
taken,  everything  that  is  done  that  lessens  his  labors  and  so  his 
trouble,  this  is  an  encouragement,  a  help,  not  a  mere  pity. 

Looking  back  over  this  correspondence,  I  find  in  it 
evidence  that  I  was  then  temperamentally,  as  I  have 
been  ever  since,  and  am  now,  both  a  mystic  and  a  ration- 
alist —  not  alternately  first  one  and  then  the  other,  but 
a  mystical  rationalist  or  a  rationalistic  mystic.  I  had,  so 
far  as  I  recall,  never  heard  of  an  astral  body,  or  a  sub- 
liminal self,  or  of  thought  transference.  But  I  thoroughly 
believed  that  the  spirit  had  its  independent  existence, 
used  the  body  as  its  instrument,  and  was  often  handi- 
capped by  the  instrument  which  it  used.  I  did  not  be- 
lieve, and  did  not  wish  to  believe,  in  the  resurrection  of 
the  body. 

At  the  same  time  I  had  gone  through,  or  at  least  gone 
near,  "every  form  and  shape  of  skepticism."  I  could 
not  accept  the  Bible  as  a  final  and  ultimate  authority, 
and  stated  my  view  in  these  words:  "The  Bible  is  not  a 
book,  it  is  a  library,  written  by  various  persons  and  at 
various  stages  of  the  world,  a  part  of  them  so  far  back 
in  antiquity  that  their  authorship  is  a  question  not  free 
from  difficulty.  .  .  .  What  is  the  reason  of  our  consent 
to  this  absolute  authority  which  the  Bible  claims  over 
us.f^  I  think  there  are  comparatively  few  in  the  Church 
who  could  answer  that  question  or  would  if  they  could." 
I  had  not  yet  found  an  answer  to  this  question,  or  at 
least  any  fuller  answer  than  my  cousin  gave  to  my  very 
frank  confession  of  my  perplexities:  I  wrote  her,  "I 
think  you  are  right  that  our  experience  of  the  truths  of 
the  Bible  is  the  best  evidence  of  its  source."  One  thing 
was  for  me  absolutely  settled;  I  would  not  rest  my  re- 
ligious faith  on  habit;  I  would  not  rest  content  with 
nothing  more  than  an  inherited  faith  in  the  Bible,  and 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  121 

this  is  what  I  thought  I  should  do,  "if  I  give  nothing 
more  than  a  reasonless  assent  to  it  through  timidity  or 
laziness  without  understanding  the  reasons  there  are 
for  its  acceptance." 

As  I  have  read  over  the  letters  from  which  these  ex- 
tracts have  been  taken  I  have  been  somewhat  surprised 
at  their  extreme  frankness  of  seK-disclosure  and  at 
their  curiously  combined  crudity  and  maturity  of 
thought  expression.  With  many  of  my  ideas  my  cousin 
did  not  agree,  as  with  some  of  them  I  do  not  now  myself 
agree;  but  these  differences  did  nothing  to  separate  us, 
and  we  were  married  on  the  14th  day  of  October,  1857, 
at  her  home  in  Waverley,  Massachusetts.  Her  mother 
had  died  on  June  1  of  that  year.  The  house  was  heavily 
encumbered  and  was  to  be  sold.  The  marriage  of  the 
only  daughter  meant  the  breaking  up  of  the  home.  Only 
a  few  very  intimate  friends  were  present,  and  a  certain 
sadness  characterized  the  occasion.  The  day  had  been 
cloudy,  with  a  threatening  of  rain.  But  just  as  the  bene- 
diction was  pronounced  the  sun  broke  through  the 
clouds  and  shone  upon  the  wedding  party.  I  had 
written  my  cousin  something  like  a  year  before  that  I 
had  no  inclination  for  a  wedding  journey.  Since  the 
death  of  my  mother  in  1843  I  had  had  no  real  home, 
though  my  aunts  had  done  all  that  could  be  done  as 
substitute-mothers.  I  was  eager  for  a  home  of  my  very 
own  and  would  rather  spend  the  time  in  getting  our  new 
home  prepared  for  our  occupancy.  My  bride  agreed  with 
me.  Our  wedding  journey  was  simply  the  trip  from 
Boston  to  New  York.  We  were  married  on  Wednesday. 
I  had  imperative  court  engagements  on  Monday.  Our 
honeymoon  vacation,  therefore,  was  of  the  briefest. 

After  a  month  of  very  unsatisfactory  experience  in  a 
New  York  boarding-house,  my  brother  Vaughan  and  I 


122  REMINISCENCES 

found  what  served  before  the  days  of  apartment-houses 
as  a  substitute  for  a  modern  apartment.  An  enterprising 
landlord  had  built  under  one  roof  in  Fifty-fourth  Street 
between  Seventh  and  Eighth  Avenues  a  block  of  eight 
cottages  two  stories  and  an  attic  in  height.  They  were 
built  in  the  middle  of  the  lot,  leaving  room  in  front  for 
large  houses  to  be  erected  later,  and  were  placed  back 
to  back  with  no  yard  or  air  space  between  them.  One 
set  of  these  cottages  faced  on  Fifty-fourth,  the  other  on 
Fifty-fifth  Street.  Hallways  ran  through  the  block  from 
one  front  to  the  other  and  the  front  doors  of  each  apart- 
ment opened  from  this  hallway.  My  whole  house  was 
fifteen  feet  in  width  by  twenty  in  length,  not  quite  as 
large  as  my  present  library. 

My  brother  Vaughan  and  I  each  took  one  of  these 
cottages;  the  landlord  cut  out  the  dividing  partition 
between  the  back  parlors,  throwing  them  into  one  room, 
which  we  used  as  a  common  library.  My  brother  Ed- 
ward lived  with  us,  my  cousin  Waldo  with  my  brother 
Vaughan.  We  had  to  walk  down  to  Forty-eighth  Street 
for  the  nearest  horse-car  to  take  us  to  our  downtown 
oflSce  in  Nassau  Street. 

Early  in  1858  —  I  am  not  able  to  fix  the  exact  date  — 
with  money  lent  to  me  by  my  father,  I  bought  a  commo- 
dious two-story-and-attic  house  in  State  Street,  Brook- 
lyn, not  far  from  Flatbush  Avenue,  where,  on  the  25th 
day  of  June,  1859,  my  oldest  son,  Lawrence,  was  born. 

Every  circumstance  conspired  to  make  me  the  hap- 
piest of  men.  I  had  a  prosperous  and  growing  law  busi- 
ness; for  partners,  brothers  who  were  wholly  congenial, 
and  who  had  done  everything  which  brothers  could  do 
to  push  forward  my  fortunes;  for  an  anticipated  future, 
a  legal  career  with  them  which  might  be  anything  we 
had  the  ability  to  make  it.    My  brothers'  wives  were 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  123 

cousins  of  mine  and  cousins  of  my  wife,  and  dear  to  both 
of  us,  so  that  nothing  was  wanting  to  make  perfect  our 
family  relationship.  I  was  in  a  city  where  I  had  many 
friends,  and  the  doors  were  opened  for  us  to  the  most 
congenial  society.  My  church  relations  were  ideal.  I 
listened  every  Sunday  to  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  the  most 
inspiring  preacher  in  America,  and  was  in  exceptionally 
intimate  relations  with  him  and  with  the  active  mem- 
bers of  an  enthusiastic  working  church.  I  was  devoted 
to  my  wife;  she  was  devoted  to  me;  no  home  could  be 
happier.  And  my  income  was  entirely  adequate  for 
present  needs,  and  was  steadily  increasing. 

And  yet  —  I  was  restless.  Not  discontented,  cer- 
tainly not  unhappy,  but  ill  at  ease.  My  childhood  as- 
pirations for  the  ministry  had  been  rekindled,  and  I 
could  not  extinguish  them.  New  significance  and  new 
motive  power  were  given  to  them  by  the  public  ques- 
tions of  the  day  and  by  the  revolution  in  my  own  spirit- 
ual experience. 

I  have  already  told  how  the  slavery  question  affected 
me;  how  it  seemed  to  me  much  more  than  the  mere 
question  whether  the  negro  should  remain  in  slavery; 
that  it  really  involved  the  question  whether  liberty 
should  be  strangled  on  the  continent  dedicated  to  liberty. 
I  longed  to  have  some  active  part  in  dealing  with  that 
question.  My  half -formed  desire  to  go  to  Kansas  had 
been  quickly  laid  aside;  but  not  the  desire  to  be  in  the 
battle  for  liberty.  Before  my  marriage  I  had  counseled 
with  my  wife  to  be  about  going  to  Boston  to  take 
up  the  practice  of  the  law  there.  I  fancied  that  in 
ten  years  I  could  win  a  position  and  an  income  which 
would  justify  me  in  giving  time  and  thought  to  the  anti- 
slavery  cause.  With  my  principles  there  was  no  hope  of 
a  political  career  for  me  in  New  York;  there  might  be  in 


124  REMINISCENCES 

Boston,  Neither  my  cousin  nor  her  father  approved  the 
scheme,  and  I  abandoned  it;  only  to  revive  it  again  after 
her  mother's  death.  I  could  come  to  Boston;  we  could 
live  in  Waverley ;  save  the  house  there,  and  make  a  home 
for  her  and  for  her  father  and  brother.  A  little  encour- 
agement from  her  and  I  should  have  made  the  attempt. 
But  neither  she  nor  her  father  gave  the  encouragement 
and  after  protracted  discussion  I  abandoned  it. 

But  my  increasing  professional  business  did  not  pre- 
vent my  increasing  attention  to  ethical  and  spiritual 
problems  outside  the  law.  I  early  became  a  member  of 
the  Brooklyn  Young  Men's  Christian  Association;  at- 
tended with  some  regularity  its  weekly  prayer-meeting; 
became  a  member  of  its  directorate;  then  a  member  of 
a  committee  which  held  regular  meetings  throughout 
one  winter  to  revise  its  constitution;  and  took  an  active 
part  in  securing  the  reluctantly  given  consent  to  have 
the  rooms  of  the  Association  opened  on  Sunday  after- 
noons from  three  o'clock  until  the  close  of  the  prayer- 
meeting  at  six  o'clock. 

The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  was  the  chief 
field  of  my  religious  and  reform  activity;  but  not  the 
only  field.  I  took  an  active  part  in  debating  in  the 
Linden  Society  the  imprisonment  of  Passmore  William- 
son,^ in  a  meeting  which  so  crowded  the  house  where  it 
was  held  that  not  only  the  parlors  and  the  halls,  but  the 
stairs  from  top  to  bottom,  were  filled  with  listeners. 
I  wrote  for  the  Maine  "Evangelist"  articles  on  theo- 
logical and  ethical  topics,  specifically  on  the  duty  of 
the  Church  and  the  pulpit  to  deal  with  the  slavery 
question.  The  Hebrew  code  exempted  the  young  man 
from  public  service  for  the  year  after  his  marriage.    I 

^  Imprisoned  on  the  charge  of  encouraging  or  cooperating  in  resistance  to 
the  execution  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law. 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  125 

wanted  no  such  exemption  in  my  volunteer  service; 
did  not  after  my  marriage  lessen  my  interest  in  work  on 
religious  and  ethical  lines;  took  a  Bible  class  in  the 
Plymouth  Church  Sunday-School,  for  which  I  pre- 
pared, if  not  as  fully,  at  least  as  conscientiously  as  I 
prepared  for  my  cases  in  court;  and  attended  with  con- 
siderable regularity  the  Plymouth  Church  prayer- 
meetings,  which  I  could  go  to  with  my  wife,  in  lieu  of 
the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  prayer-meet- 
ings, to  which  I  should  have  had  to  go  alone. 

This  growing  interest  and  activity  in  the  ethical  and 
spiritual  field  were  both  intensified  and  practically 
directed  toward  the  ultimate  result,  the  change  in  my 
profession,  by  two  influences:  the  ministry  of  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  and  the  revival  of  1857-58. 

In  1853  Mr.  Beecher  was  the  most  hotly  debated 
preacher  in  the  American  pulpit.  It  was  characteristic 
of  my  brother  Vaughan  to  resolve  to  form  no  judgment 
on  this  much-discussed  man  until  he  had  heard  him  six 
times.  The  experiment  was  decisive.  My  brother 
speedily  became  a  member  of  Plymouth  Church  and  an 
ardent  supporter  of  Mr.  Beecher  both  in  moral  reform 
and  in  theological  doctrine.  When  I  went  to  Brooklyn 
to  live  with  my  brother,  I  naturally  went  occasionally 
with  him  to  his  church;  but  at  first  only  occasionally, 
because  I  was  generally  engaged  in  playing  the  organ 
elsewhere.  At  first  Mr.  Beecher's  disregard  of  pulpit 
conventionalism  jarred  upon  me  and  he  was  too  radical 
for  me  both  in  politics  and  theology.  But  he  was  also 
much  too  radical  for  my  cousin  and  her  parents,  who 
were  members  of  Dr.  Kirk's  church  in  Boston,  where 
the  Unitarian  controversy  had  made  the  evangelical 
faith  both  more  definite  and  more  dogmatic  than  it  was 
elsewhere.    In  writing  to  my  cousin  I  attempted  loyally 


126  REMINISCENCES 

to  defend  Mr.  Beecher  against  the  misrepresentation  to 
which  he  was  constantly  subjected.  There  is  no  better 
way  to  become  hostile  to  a  public  man  than  to  criticise 
him,  and  no  better  way  to  become  friendly  than  to  de- 
fend him  from  hostile  criticism. 

My  letters  were  at  first  apologetic,  then  defensive, 
then  eulogistic.    In  March,  1854,  I  wrote:  — 

There  is  much  about  him  I  don't  think  I  shall  ever  like. 
There  is  much  I  always  have  liked.  So  I  must  say  nothing 
about  the  first,  and  only  listen  to  the  second  and  get  along. 

Eighteen  months  later  (September,  1855)  I  wrote:  — 

You  ask  me  what  I  think  of  Mr.  Beecher.  I  have  kept  my 
answer  till  to-day  because  I  think  so  many  things  of  him  that 
I  cannot  answer  the  question  in  a  little  space.  But  now  I  con- 
clude to  leave  the  discussion  of  his  character  till  I  can  talk  to 
you  about  him.  I  will  simply  say  that  I  think  him  a  great  man, 
though  hardly  domesticated,  a  good  man,  though  a  little 
rough.  He  is  not  a  flower  but  a  tree,  not  a  garden  but  a  forest, 
not  a  lake  but  a  cataract.  A  flower  is  prettier,  but  a  tree  more 
solid;  a  garden  we  fancy,  a  forest  we  use;  a  lake  is  very  placid 
and  gentle,  but  waterfalls  drive  all  our  mills.  I  think,  or  rather 
I  presume,  Mr.  Beecher  is  a  better  man  than  any  other  minis- 
ter I  know  in  Brooklyn,  and  does  more  good  than  all  the  rest 
of  them  put  together.  And  yet  much  I  do  not  like  about  him. 
I  think  I  shall  never  be  a  "Beecherite." 

Eighteen  months  later  again  (March,  1857)  I  wrote:  — 

I  would  have  given  a  great  deal  to  have  had  your  father  and 
mother  and  yourself  hear  Mr.  Beecher's  sermon  this  morning. 
In  particular  what  he  said  of  the  incarnation  and  divinity  of 
Christ.  I  never  knew  any  clergyman  whose  theology  not  only 
but  whose  preaching  and  whose  whole  religious  character  and 
teaching  were  so  full  of  Christ.  Christ  is  to  Mr.  Beecher  hter- 
ally  "all  in  all." 

These  extracts  indicate  the  change  in  one  hearer's 
estimate  of  Mr.  Beecher  in  three  years'  time;  they  prob- 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER   IN   THE   FIFTIES 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  127 

ably  indicate  the  change  wrought  in  the  minds  of  many; 
though  for  some  the  change  required  a  shorter,  for  some 
a  longer  time.  I  am  not  sure  but  they  also  indicate  some 
change  in  the  preaching  of  Mr.  Beecher,  which  grew 
mellower  and  more  logical,  and,  in  a  sense,  more  spirit- 
ual, as  he  grew  older.  They  do  not,  however,  ade- 
quately interpret  the  radical  revolution  which  he  made 
in  my  method  of  thinking  of  religious  truth,  and,  what 
is  much  more  important,  in  my  religious  life.  To  state 
that  revolution  in  a  paragraph  cannot  be  otherwise  than 
unjust  to  the  old  views  and  inadequate  for  the  new. 
Antitheses  are  never  quite  accurate.  Nevertheless  the 
statement  must  be  made,  for  this  change  in  my  expe- 
rience was  a  chief  cause  of  the  change  in  my  profession. 

When  I  came  to  Brooklyn  in  the  spring  of  1854,  my 
Christian  theology  was  something  like  this:  I  regarded 
God  as  the  Moral  Governor  of  the  Universe,  the  Bible 
as  a  Book  of  Laws,  Jesus  Christ  as  the  giver  of  a  law 
more  spiritual  and  more  difficult  to  obey  than  the  laws 
of  Moses.  Sin  was  disobedience  to  those  laws,  redemp- 
tion was  remission  of  deserved  penalty.  Under  Mr. 
Beecher 's  ministry  I  came  to  regard  God  as  a  Father, 
whose  character  and  attitude  toward  me  was  interpreted 
by  my  own  father;  the  law,  whether  the  Ten  Command- 
ments or  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  as  an  interpreta- 
tion to  me  of  God's  ideals  for  his  children;  Jesus  Christ 
as  the  supreme  manifestation  of  the  Father;  and  re- 
demption as  a  new  and  divine  life  of  faith,  hope,  and 
love  which  he  inspires  in  all  who  desire  to  receive  it. 
And  as  this  new  view  possessed  my  mind  and  this  new 
life  inspired  my  motive  powers,  the  passion  to  carry  to 
others  the  message  of  love  and  life  which  had  been  given 
to  me  grew  well-nigh  irresistible. 

This  passion  was  intensified  by  the  revival  of  1858; 


/ 


128  REMINISCENCES 

by  the  meetings  which  were  held  during  the  winter  of 
1858-59  in  Plymouth  Church;  and  especially  by  one  in- 
cident in  that  revival  which  moved  me  very  deeply. 
This  revival  exerted  so  important  an  influence  on  the 
life  of  the  Nation  that  James  Ford  Rhodes  has  thought 
it  deserving  a  brief  though  graphic  account  in  his  "His- 
tory of  the  United  States.'*  "It  was,"  he  says,  "declared 
to  be  '  the  most  extensive  and  thorough  ever  experienced 
in  America/  Certainly  no  similar  movement  since  has 
even  approached  it  in  fervor."  ^  It  extended  from 
Maine  to  Minnesota;  its  effects  were  felt  alike  in  the 
great  cities  and  in  the  backwoods;  and  its  importance 
was  recognized  alike  by  friend  and  foe.  To  Christians 
it  was  "the  great  awakening";  to  the  Boston  "Libera- 
tor," the  organ  of  Thomas  Paine's  infidelity,  it  was  an 
"epidemic."  It  was  not  only  the  latest,  but  probably 
the  last,  revival  of  this  peculiar  type.  It  is  scarcely 
possible  that  its  like  can  ever  be  seen  again  in  this  coun- 
try. For  it  is  not  conceivable  that  the  conditions  which 
produced  it  can  ever  again  exist. 

The  old  Calvinism  treated  the  whole  human  race  as 
a  unit.  In  the  person  of  its  progenitor  it  had  been  tried 
in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and  his  failure  had  involved  all 
his  posterity  in  ruin.  Man  no  longer  possessed  freedom 
of  the  will;  he  could  not  repent  if  he  would;  he  was  shut 
up  to  sin  and  misery  by  the  one  great  disaster.  From 
this  ruined  race  God  had  selected  some  to  be  saved  who 
were  the  recipients  of  his  special  grace.  For  the  rest 
there  was,  and  could  be,  no  hope.  The  paralyzing  effect 
of  this  doctrine  of  despair  is  illustrated  by  an  incident 
in  the  life  of  the  English  missionary  Cary :  when  he  ven- 
tured to  propose  some  organized  effort  for  sending  the 
Gospel  to  the  heathen,  an  old  Calvinist  called  out,  "Sit 

^  James  Ford  Rhodes's  History  of  the  United  States,  vol.  in,  pp.  101-07. 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  129 

down,  young  man;  sit  down.  If  God  wishes  to  save  the 
heathen,  he  can  do  it  without  your  help  or  mine/*  The 
preaching  of  Wesley  and  Whitfield  that  salvation  was 
offered  to  all  men,  and  that  every  man  could  elect  him- 
self to  receive  it,  was  everywhere  followed  by  great 
emotional  excitement  and  great  moral  reform.  This 
message  was  taken  up  in  the  Puritan  churches  by  such 
men  as  Charles  G.  Finney,  Lyman  Beecher,  and  Albert 
Barnes,  and  was  everywhere  followed  by  similar  results. 
It  was  a  new  theology;  but  it  was  more.  For  these 
preachers  applied  their  doctrine  to  life  and  conduct; 
and  in  one  respect  more  effectively  than  the  early 
Methodists  had  done.  Bred  in  the  school  of  Calvinism, 
they  held  with  the  older  Calvinists  to  the  solidarity  of 
the  race,  and  pressed  home  upon  their  hearers  their  re- 
sponsibility for  the  sins  of  intemperance  and  slavery. 
The  revival  of  1858  was  a  product  of  this  new  theology 
combined  with  the  temperance  and  anti-slavery  move- 
ments, which  were  partly  caused  by  it  and  partly  in- 
dependent of  it.  The  revival  was  far  more  than  "an 
emotional  contagion."  It  was  an  awakening  of  the  con- 
science and  a  reform  of  the  life.  The  spirit  of  the  min- 
isters of  the  new  evangel  was  well  illustrated  by  Mrs. 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's  sentence:  "We  trust  since 
prayer  has  once  entered  the  counting-room,  it  will  never 
leave  it;  and  that  the  ledger,  the  sand-box,  the  blotting- 
book,  the  pen  and  ink,  will  all  be  consecrated  by  a  heav- 
enly presence." 

Mr.  Beecher  availed  himself  of  this  opportunity  with 
characteristic  energy  and  enthusiasm.  He  became  an 
evangelist,  preaching  everywhere  during  the  week. 
Burton's  old  theater  in  Chambers  Street,  disused  as  a 
theater,  was  used  for  a  noon-day  prayer-meeting.  At 
one  of  these  meetings  Mr.  Beecher  delivered  an  address 


130  REMINISCENCES 

to  a  congregation  which  packed  the  theater  as  it  never 
had  been  packed  before.  His  sermons  in  his  own  church 
were  specifically  directed  either  to  conversion  or  to 
urging  the  practical  fruits  of  righteousness  upon  those 
who  hoped  they  were  converted.  Some  one  told  him  of  a 
stranger  whose  whole  life  had  been  changed  by  one  of 
his  sermons  —  "an  arrow  shot  at  a  venture,"  he  called 
it.  Mr.  Beecher  gave  one  of  the  secrets  of  his  pulpit 
success  by  his  reply.  "I  never  shot  an  arrow  at  a  ven- 
ture in  my  life,"  he  said.  "I  have  always  taken  aim; 
but  I  have  n't  always  brought  down  the  game  I  aimed 
at."  At  the  May  communion  in  1858  one  hundred  and 
sixty-three  joined  the  church  on  confession  of  their 
faith.  There  were  so  many  waiting  for  examination  and 
admission  that  a  second  communion  was  arranged  for 
in  June,  at  which  a  hundred  and  thirty-five  more  were 
admitted. 

A  distinguishing  feature  of  the  life  of  the  church  dur- 
ing this  revival  was  the  daily  morning  prayer-meeting 
followed  by  opportunities  for  conversation  with  Mr. 
Beecher  and  with  other  members  of  his  church  who  were 
present  and  eager  to  aid  him  as  volunteers.  There  were, 
I  think,  no  formal  inquiry  meetings  and  no  organized 
band  of  workers.  Everything  was  free,  spontaneous, 
mobile.  The  prayer-meetings  were  like  none  other  that 
I  have  ever  attended.  They  often  became  conversa- 
tional, and  even  colloquial.  Strangers  were  surprised  to 
find  humor  not  discouraged,  a  ripple  of  laughter  some- 
times sweeping  over  the  audience,  and  yet  the  seri- 
ousness never  disturbed.  Religion  seemed  a  natural 
experience,  something  for  every-day  use,  something  to 
be  enjoyed.  Mr.  Beecher  always  closed  the  meeting  by 
inviting  any  present  who  wished  to  do  so  to  ask  for 
prayers,  for  themselves  or  for  others.    Sometimes  there 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  131 

were  few  requests,  sometimes  many.  If  there  were  none, 
still  there  was  no  sense  of  failure  or  disappointment. 
When  fifteen  or  twenty  requests  had  been  made,  Mr. 
Beecher's  abihty  to  remember  all  in  his  closing  prayer 
and  group  them  in  such  wise  as  to  make  his  petitions 
specific  and  yet  not  offensively  individualistic,  seemed 
to  me  then,  as  it  seems  to  me  now,  wonderful. 

My  younger  brother  Edward  was  in  1858  a  sopho- 
more in  the  New  York  University.  He  had  lived  with 
my  wife  and  myself  whUe  we  were  living  in  New  York. 
He  was  warm-hearted  and  high-minded,  and  was  very 
dear  to  both  of  us,  but  we  both  felt  anxiety  concerning 
him;  for,  like  many  another  young  man  in  his  teens,  he 
was  living  what  might  be  termed  a  careless  life  and 
drifting  where  the  current  might  take  him.  One  morn- 
ing in  May  I  asked  prayers  for  him.  I  doubt  whether  I 
should  have  had  the  courage  to  do  so  but  for  my  wife. 
I  was  averse  to  letting  others  know  my  feelings;  I  was  \y 
doubly  averse  to  letting  them  be  known  when  another 
so  dear  to  me  as  my  brother  was  concerned.  A  week 
later  my  wife  received  from  him  the  letter  from  which  I 
make  the  following  extract :  — 

It  is  with  feelings  of  unspeakable  joy  and  gratitude  that  I 
take  my  pen  to  tell  you  that  George  Baker,  Albert  Stewart,  my 
most  intimate  friends  at  college,  and  myself  have  formed  the 
determination  to  give  up  this  world  and  devote  ourselves  here- 
after to  God  and  his  service.  The  particulars  may  not  be  un- 
interesting to  you.  We  three  started  out  yesterday  afternoon 
(you  remember  how  pleasant  it  was)  for  a  walk  on  Broadway. 
At  about  one  o'clock  one  of  us  proposed  —  I  believe  it  was  I 
proposed  —  that  we  go  and  get  something  "to  eat,"  in  other 
words,  to  "have  a  time."  We  entered  accordingly  Rud's 
saloon,  corner  of  Twelfth  Street,  and  ordered  our  refreshments. 
There  our  conversation  turned  upon  matters  and  things  in  the 
University,  and  upon  the  recent  conversion  of  one  of  the  hard- 
est fellows  there.    From  that  we  expressed  our  own  feeHngs 


132  REMINISCENCES 

upon  the  subject  of  religion,  and  there  in  that  place,  where 
we  had  often,  often  met  for  frivolity  and  almost  carousal,  .  .  . 
we  three  solemnly  pledged  ourselves  to  begin  a  new  life  in 
God's  service.  The  last  time  I  went  there  I  little  thought 
what  feeling  I  should  have  on  the  next  occasion  that  I  visited 
it.  We  talked  the  matter  over  till  three  o'clock,  and  then  went 
and  had  an  interview  with  Professor  Martin.  In  the  evening 
we  went  to  a  prayer-meeting  at  Dr.  Pott's  house,  where  one  of 
our  students  by  the  name  of  Lloyd  resides.  At  the  close  of  the 
meeting  we  three  repaired  to  Lloyd's  room  and  remained  there 
in  conversation  and  prayer  till  a  late  hour.  We  three  have 
been  together  all  day  to-day,  have  attended  a  meeting  at  Dr. 
Hutton's  church,  then  went  to  Professor  Crosby's,  and  after- 
wards to  Stewart's,  where  we  hold  our  first  'prayer-meeting. 
We  three  are  one  in  our  feeling  and  are  determined. 

The  three  friends  became  ministers  of  the  Gospel. 
My  brother  Edward,  as  rector  of  St.  James's  Church, 
Cambridge,  has  left  behind  him,  in  its  beautiful  edifice 
and  its  active  spiritual  membership,  a  monument  of  a 
life  of  devoted,  useful,  and  successful  ministerial  service. 

I  do  not  know  that  this  incident  directly  influenced 
my  ultimate  choice  to  change  from  the  law  to  the  min- 
istry. But  it  exerted  a  powerful  indirect  influence,  for 
it  strengthened  for  me  my  faith  in  prayer,  which  sadly 
needed  strengthening.  I  continued  my  law  business 
with  success.  I  continued  to  be  interested  in  it.  But 
more  and  more  my  thoughts,  when  released  from  the 
duties  of  the  office,  turned  spontaneously  to  dreams  of 
the  ministry.  A  new  Congregational  church  was  in 
process  of  erection  near  our  home  in  Brooklyn.  I  used, 
as  I  walked  by,  to  go  in  and  imagine  myself  the  pastor 
and  its  pulpit  my  platform.  I  wanted  an  outlet  for  my 
aspirations,  an  expression  for  my  dreams.  I  talked  them 
over  fully  with  my  wife  and  I  gave  expression  to  them 
in  a  letter  to  my  wife's  father:  *' Every  Sunday  night  I 
grow  somewhat  aspiring  and  ambitious  and  feel  in  a 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  133 

measure  dissatisfied  with  my  present  life  and  a  wish  for 
the  ministerial  labor.  .  .  .  Monday  morning,  however, 
I  generally  go  at  my  work  with  good  zest,  determined 
to  do  with  my  might  what  my  hands  find  to  do.'*  My 
father-in-law  did  not  encourage  my  ministerial  aspira- 
tions. Instead,  in  a  long  letter  he  gave  me  an  account 
of  his  recent  experiences  in  Congregational  councils, 
with  the  knowledge  which  they  had  brought  to  him  of 
ministerial  difficulties  and  failures,  and  the  consequent 
frequent  changes  of  pastorate.  My  wife  did  not  take  my 
aspirations  very  seriously  —  not  enough  so  to  argue 
against  them.  "Abby,"  I  wrote  her  father,  ''laughs 
at  my  ministerial  dreams  sometimes.'* 

At  length,  however,  she  mentioned  them  casually  to 
her  cousin,  my  brother  Vaughan's  wife,  and  she  men- 
tioned it  in  turn  to  her  husband,  and  he  came  straight- 
way to  me  with  the  proposal  that,  if  I  really  wanted  to 
go  into  the  ministry,  my  brothers  not  only  would  put 
no  obstacle  in  my  way  —  they  would  open  the  door  for 
me  to  do  so.  That  he  should  have  learned  of  my  care- 
fully concealed  aspirations  greatly  troubled  me.  I  was 
inclined  to  be  vexed  with  my  wife  for  having  disclosed 
them.  I  have  since  been  very  grateful  to  her.  For, 
whether  consciously  or  not,  she  saved  me  from  a  very 
serious  moral  peril  —  the  peril  of  commending  myself 
for  entertaining  a  purpose  which  I  had  not  the  courage 
to  fulfill.  It  is  never  safe  to  live  in  actual  conduct  one 
life  and  to  live  in  dreams  another.  And  that  was  what 
I  had  been  doing.  I  could  do  it  no  longer.  I  must  choose. 
Honesty  compelled  me  definitely  to  put  aside  once  and 
forever  my  ministerial  ambitions  and  devote  myself 
wholly  to  the  law,  or  definitely  to  abandon  the  profes- 
sion of  the  law  and  undertake,  at  whatever  sacrifice 
might  be  necessary,  to  fulfill  my  ministerial  ambition. 


134  REMINISCENCES 

The  problem  was  not  to  be  decided  easily.  My  letters 
written  at  that  time  bring  back  to  me  the  questions 
which  perplexed  my  mind  —  questions  which  it  took 
six  months  of  reflection  to  decide. 

Health.'^  Under  the  watchful  care  and  hygienic  house- 
keeping of  my  wife,  and  the  rest  which  her  home-keep- 
ing afforded  me,  my  health  had  steadily  improved.  My 
throat?  My  father  and  his  brothers  had  all  of  them  been 
handicapped  by  throat  difficulties,  and  all  but  my  Uncle 
John  had  been  compelled  to  relinquish  the  pulpit.  I 
consulted  an  expert,  and  he  advised  me  that  my  lung 
power  was  considerably  greater  than  belonged  to  a  man 
of  my  size,  weight,  and  build,  and,  if  I  used  my  throat 
aright,  it  ought  not  to  give  me  trouble.  It  never  has 
given  me  trouble;  and  I  have  made  myself  heard  by  an 
audience  of  ten  thousand  under  one  roof  and  by  one  of 
four  or  five  thousand  in  the  open  air.  My  house?  I  had 
bought  it,  but  only  partially  paid  for  it  —  in  fact,  not 
really  paid  for  it  at  all,  since  the  purchase  money  had 
been  advanced  to  me  by  my  father.  And  it  was  salable 
property.  Preparation  for  the  ministry?  I  could  not 
take  my  wife  and  child  through  a  theological  seminary. 
But  my  Uncle  John  was  at  that  time  supplying  the  Con- 
gregational pulpit  in  the  old  home  church  at  Farming- 
ton,  Maine;  and  I  could  go  back  to  the  method  of  the 
fathers  and  study  under  him.  How  live  while  I  was  pur- 
suing those  studies?  The  home  at  Fewacres  was  opened 
to  us  by  my  Aunts  Sallucia  and  Clara,  and  my  brothers 
were  ready  to  pay  for  my  share  in  the  good  will  of  the 
business  and  in  the  law  library  which  we  jointly  owned, 
enough  to  cover  our  living  expenses  until  I  was  ready 
to  take  a  parish.  And  I  recalled  the  fact  that  Dr.  Fin- 
ney, who  began  life  as  a  lawyer,  passed  from  the  law 
into  the  ministry  with  but  one  year  of  special  prepara- 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  135 

tion.  My  wife?  Had  my  wife  objected  to  the  change 
I  should  have  remained  in  the  law.  But  she  neither 
objected  nor  approved.  When  a  friend  asked  her  what 
she  thought  of  marrying  a  lawyer  and  finding  herself 
the  wife  of  a  minister,  she  replied,  cheerfully,  "I  did 
not  marry  a  lawyer.  I  married  Lyman  Abbott."  I  had 
only  to  consider  two  questions:  Had  I  the  character 
which  fitted  me  for  the  ministry?  and.  Was  I  willing 
to  pay  the  price  involved  in  the  change? 

About  one  question,  and  that  the  more  fundamental, 
I  had  great  doubts.  "I  do  not  think,"  I  wrote,  "that  I 
am  so  well  qualified  for  it  [the  ministry]  as  I  am  for  my 
present  profession.  I  think  I  should  only  do  the  preach- 
ing at  all  successfully,  and  I  think  I  should  preach  out 
before  long.  Of  all  things  I  should  dislike  most  being 
obliged  to  preach  when  I  had  nothing  to  say."  I  was 
temperamentally  skeptical,  and  how  far  I  could  accept 
the  creed  of  the  Church  and  work  in  harmony  with  it 
was  a  disturbing  question.  I  believed  in  God  and  in  his 
providential  care  of  his  children.  But  I  lacked  a  knowl- 
edge of  him  as  a  personal  friend.  I  wanted  "not  a  tech- 
nical and  theologic  acquaintance  with  his  attributes, 
but  a  personal  and  immediate  acquaintance  and  recog- 
nition of  him  as  a  person;  this  is  what  the  Bible  incul- 
cates when  it  directs  us  to  grow  in  the  knowledge  of 
God."  I  doubted  my  motives.  "How  much  of  it"  (my 
ministerial  ambition),  I  admitted  to  myself  and  con- 
fessed in  writing,  "grows  out  of  vanity  and  a  certain 
ambition  common  to  young  men  to  be  heard  from,  to 
speak  in  public  and  to  an  audience,  and  how  much  out 
of  real  love  to  the  work,  I  have  never  been  able  really 
to  determine." 

So  six  months  passed  in  questioning,  balancing,  re- 
flecting,   counseling.     Every    choice    involves    a    self- 


136  REMINISCENCES 

sacrifice.  I  must  choose  what  I  would  sacrifice.  Would 
I  sacrifice  my  assured  income,  my  association  with  my 
brothers,  my  legal  and  political  ambitions,  my  Brooklyn 
friends,  my  new  home,  and  enter  with  my  wife  and  child 
on  a  new  experiment  in  life,  with  the  certainty  of  small 
material  reward  and  no  certainty  of  spiritual  success.? 
Or  would  I  sacrifice  my  ethical  and  spiritual  ambitions? 
Finally,  and  with  much  hesitation  and  some  misgivings, 
I  decided  to  leave  the  law  and  certainty  for  the  ministry 
and  uncertainty. 

Whether  my  father  had  approved  my  change  from 
the  law  to  the  ministry  I  do  not  know;  I  doubt  whether 
I  ever  knew.  Certainly  if  he  had  been  in  this  country 
when  I  was  debating  with  myself  the  question  I  should 
have  sought  his  counsel;  as  certainly  he  would  have  de- 
clined to  exert  any  pressure  in  favor  of  or  against  the 
change.  He  would  have  said  to  me,  "This  is  a  question 
which  only  you  can  decide."  He  then  would  have  put 
before  me  with  great  clearness,  but  also  with  absolutely 
judicial  fairness,  the  advantages  and  the  disadvantages 
of  the  change,  and  would  have  left  me  to  balance  them 
and  come  to  my  own  conclusion.  But  when  that  con- 
clusion was  once  reached  he  proceeded  to  give  me  every 
help  in  his  power  to  carry  my  plan  to  a  successful  issue. 
This  was  also  characteristic  of  him.  He  was  as  ready  to 
help  his  sons  make  successful  an  enterprise  the  wisdom 
of  which  he  doubted  as  if  it  were  one  which  he  enthu- 
siastically approved.  Six  years  before  this  he  had  mar- 
ried a  second  time;  the  house  in  Greene  Street,  which  he 
owned,  and  which  had  been  occupied  by  the  school,  he 
had  rented  as  a  boarding-house,  reserving  rooms  for  his 
city  home,  and  retaining  a  room  in  the  homestead  at 
Fewacres  for  his  country  home.  The  room  which  he 
kept  for  this  purpose  was  known,  from  the  use  to  which 


A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  137 

it  had  been  put  by  my  grandfather,  as  "the  oflfice." 
Much  of  his  time  was  spent  in  travel,  chiefly  in  Europe; 
but,  thanks  either  to  my  good  fortune  or,  more  proba- 
bly, to  his  good  management,  he  was  in  Farmington  in 
the  fall  of  1859,  and  I  spent  there  in  companionship  with 
him  five  weeks,  receiving  his  counsels,  and,  what  is  more 
important,  imbibing  his  spirit,  in  preparation  for  what 
was  to  be  my  life-work. 

On  the  13th  day  of  July,  1859,  I  had  written  him  my 
decision.  On  the  16th  of  July  he  had  replied  with  a 
letter  characteristic  of  him,  and  wise  in  its  counsel  to 
others  as  well  as  to  myseK.  In  the  course  of  this  letter 
he  gave  me  this  advice:  — 

I  suppose  that  any  delay  which  takes  place  in  your  being 
licensed  to  preach  is  chiefly  a  matter  of  form,  and  of  outward 
respect  to  the  profession  which  you  propose  to  enter,  as  you 
are  as  well  prepared  now  to  begin  as  you  ever  will  be.  Not 
that  I  undervalue  study  in  a  minister,  but  I  believe  he  can 
carry  on  his  studies  to  best  advantage  while  he  is  at  his  work. 
It  will  be  excellent  for  you  to  give  some  attention  to  Greek. 
You  ought  to  make  yourself  the  best  Greek  scholar  in  the 
country,  but  then  the  great  means  of  learning  the  language  is  in 
connection  with  the  investigation  of  texts  and  passages  of 
Scripture  in  writing  sermons.  As  to  theology,  there  is  a  royal 
road  to  it,  if  there  is  none  to  mathematics,  and  that  royal  road 
is  common  sense.  I  think  your  success  in  the  ministry  will  de- 
pend in  the  first  instance  on  your  talent  and  tact;  but  your 
power  of  sustaining  yourseK  for  a  long  time  on  your  attain- 
ments in  study  —  but  it  must  be  mainly  study  which  you  per- 
form while  you  are  engaged  in  your  work,  not  what  you  do 
before  you  begin. 

A  fortnight  later  he  wrote  me  a  second  letter  of 
counsel,  touching  upon  one  of  the  perils  and  perplexi- 
ties of  a  ministerial  career  and  upon  one  of  the  secrets 
of  ministerial  success.  One  passage  in  this  letter  I  quote 
because  it  is  applicable  to  many  cases:  — 


138  REMINISCENCES 

I  feel  a  very  deep  interest  in  your  future  movements,  and 
in  the  progress  of  your  plans  for  effecting  the  great  change 
in  your  course  of  life  which  you  propose.  Indeed,  I  pre- 
sume, I  feel  more  solicitude  in  respect  to  this  change  than 
you  yourself  do  —  the  young  are  so  full  of  hope  and  buoy- 
ancy of  spirits.  The  main  thing  that  I  should  feel  anxious 
about  now  is  that  you  should  not  get  behindhand  in  money 
affairs  during  the  interval  before  you  are  prepared  to 
commence  your  ministerial  labors.  As  I  said  when  convers- 
ing with  you  on  the  subject  in  Brooklyn,  the  great  evil 
which  I  should  have  to  fear  in  a  ministerial  life  is  the  being 
always  pinched  and  harassed  in  respect  to  pecuniary  means, 
and  if  you  drift  behindhand  so  as  to  get  a  little  in  debt, 
while  making  this  change,  it  will  probably  take  you  some 
years  to  get  clear  again.  In  this  view  of  the  subject  I  am 
glad  to  hear  that  you  continue  to  have  some  duties  at  the 
office,  hoping  as  I  do  that  thereby  you  do  something  toward  the 
payment  of  your  expenses.  /  think  that  this  is  far  more  im- 
portant than  any  theological  studying  that  you  may  do  during 
the  interregnum.  The  truth  is  that  sermons  which  are  made 
in  the  study,  by  a  process  of  construction  out  of  elements  drawn 
from  solitary  meditation  and  from  theological  books,  rarely  have 
any  effect  in  reaching  and  moving  human  hearts.  It  is  only  by 
going  about  among  men,  as  a  pastor,  and  learning  by  familiar 
conversation  with  them  how  they  think  and  feel,  and  then 
shaping  what  is  said  in  the  pulpit  to  meet  what  is  heard  and 
seen  in  the  real  every-day  life  —  that  any  really  good  preach- 
ing can  come.  I  think  that  if  you  ask  any  sensible  and  success- 
ful minister  he  will  tell  you  that  this  is  true,  and  that  he  has 
found  it  so  in  his  own  case.  So  that  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
great  thing  is  to  get  at  work  as  a  pastor  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
above  all  to  husband  your  resources,  and  avail  yourself  of  all 
possible  means  to  diminishing  expense,  until  you  begin  to  re- 
ceive an  income  from  your  work,  so  as  not  to  get  behindhand 
and  in  debt.  ...  I  was  employed  while  in  Farmington  in 
making  some  improvements  in  the  office  which  when  they  are 
completed  will  make  that  part  of  the  house  much  more  con- 
venient, especially  for  the  lady  who  occupies  it.  I  have 
enlarged  the  office  a  little,  and  made  a  little  bedroom,  closets, 
etc. 


'  A  TURNING-POINT  IN  MY  LIFE  139 

In  his  next  letter,  written  about  a  fortnight  later,  he 
described  more  fully  the  changes  which  he  was  making 
in  that  portion  of  the  Fewacres  house  which  he  occupied 
—  that  is,  my  grandfather's  office.  I  supposed  at  the 
time  that  these  changes  were  made  in  order  to  give  en- 
larged accommodation  to  him  and  his  wife,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  that  he  had  this  in  view.  But  on  reading  over 
these  letters  I  now  have  little  doubt  that  the  immediate 
cause  of  his  making  them  at  this  time  was  to  enable  my 
wife  and  myself  to  spend  our  winter  at  Fewacres,  which 
we  could  do  much  more  economically  than  in  or  near 
New  York  City.  He  never  intimated  to  me  that  this 
was  his  object.  It  was,  at  all  events,  the  result.  I  sold 
my  interest  in  the  firm  of  Abbott  Brothers  to  my  broth- 
ers, leased  my  house  for  the  winter,  planning  to  sell  it  in 
the  spring,  and  with  my  wife  and  child  went  to  Farm- 
ington  to  spend  the  winter  in  studies  for  the  ministry, 
where  five  years  before  I  had  spent  the  winter  in  studies 
for  the  law. 

Have  I  ever  regretted  the  change?  Never  on  my  own 
account.  But  sometimes,  when  I  have  realized  the 
sacrifice  which  this  change  imposed  on  others,  I  have 
wondered.  Was  it  right.'*  It  meant  far  greater  sacrifice 
to  my  wife  than  to  me.  Yet  I  believe  in  the  opportunity 
it  offered  her  to  share  in  her  husband's  labors  and  to 
win  by  her  pastoral  work  successes  for  him  she  was  more 
than  satisfied  with  the  change.  No  such  compensation 
came  to  my  brother  Vaughan.  Had  he  allowed  me  to 
realize  what  the  change  cost  him,  I  doubt  whether  I 
should  have  had  the  courage  to  make  it.  To  found 
a  law  firm  of  Abbott  Brothers,  to  build  it  up  and  make 
it  in  law  what  Harper  Brothers  had  been  in  the  com- 
merce of  literature,  was  the  day  dream  and  ambition 
of  his  life.    My  withdrawal  destroyed  this  dream  and 


140  REMINISCENCES 

resulted  in  a  radical  change  in  his  life's  work.  Not  till 
long  afterward  did  I  at  all  realize  what  my  choice  had 
cost  him.  He  never  told  me.  The  debt  is  one  not  to  be 
repaid,  but  may  be  quietly,  simply,  and  with  a  reverent 
thankfulness  acknowledged. 


CHAPTER  Vn 

MY    FATHER 

ON  the  1st  of  November,  1879,  sitting  by  the  bed 
where  my  father  lay  dying,  I  wrote  a  son's  estimate 
of  him  for  the  "Christian  Union."  I  entitled  it 
"Our  Father  in  Heaven."  The  title  was  characterized 
by  critics  as  irreverent.  Nevertheless  here,  thirty-four 
years  later,  I  repeat  the  opening  paragraph  of  that 
article :  — 

The  earthly  father  lies  at  my  side  sleeping  his  life  away. 
Before  the  lines  I  begin  can  be  completed  the  last  troubled 
breath  will  have  been  drawn,  and  he  will  be  at  rest.  As  for  the 
past  few  days  I  have  been  watching  with  my  brothers  by  his 
dying  bed,  my  heart  has  been  ceaselessly  and  thankfully  re- 
peating the  first  words  of  our  Lord's  Prayer,  "Our  Father  which 
art  in  Heaven."  Blessed  —  more  blessed,  I  am  sure,  than  we 
can  ever  measure  —  are  we  who  look  into  the  life  of  such  an 
earthly  father  for  the  interpretation  of  the  tender  mercies  and 
loving-kindnesses  of  our  heavenly  Father.  More  than  all 
word-teaching  has  been  the  teaching  of  his  life,  not  merely  in 
its  lesson  of  the  consecration,  the  firmness,  the  fidelity  and  gen- 
tleness of  love,  but  in  its  suggestion  of  what  must  be  the  tender 
strength  and  the  infinite  condescension  of  the  heavenly  Father 
to  his  children.  It  has  fashioned  and  vivified  all  the  religious 
life  and  experience  of  his  four  sons.  If  such  a  Hfe  is  but  a 
spark,  what  must  the  great  sun  be? 

This  paragraph  but  faintly  interprets  the  reverence  for 
my  father  and  the  intimacy  with  my  God  which  he  in- 
spired in  me.  I  do  not  attempt  here  to  tell  the  story 
of  his  life;  but  by  a  selection  of  incidents  from  that 


142  REMINISCENCES 

life  I  hope  to  give  my  readers  some  acquaintance  with 
the  man  to  whom  more  than  to  any  other  one,  perhaps 
more  than  to  all  others  combined,  I  owe  my  theological 
opinions  and  my  religious  faith.  In  the  next  chapter,  in 
giving  an  account  of  my  special  preparation  for  the 
ministry,  I  shall  describe  a  little  in  detail  that  in- 
debtedness. 

Jacob  Abbott  was  born  in  Hallo  well,  Maine,  on  the 
14th  day  of  November,  1803.  He  graduated  from  Bow- 
doin  College  in  1820,  and  from  Andover  Theological 
Seminary  four  years  later.  In  November  of  that  year 
he  was  catalogued  as  a  tutor  in  Amherst  College;  his 
success  was  such  that  in  the  following  year  he  was 
elected  Professor  of  Mathematics  and  Natural  Phi- 
losophy. His  method  of  dealing  with  young  men  is  illus- 
trated by  one  incident,  his  moral  power  over  them  by 
another  incident,  in  his  short  professorship. 

The  college  bell  was  at  that  epoch  a  favorite  object 
for  college  pranks.  The  college  bell  at  Amherst  occu- 
pied temporarily  a  wooden  tower.  One  day  the  boy 
whose  business  it  was  to  ring  the  bell  for  prayers  and 
other  exercises  came  to  my  father,  to  whom  had  been 
intrusted  the  care  of  the  grounds  and  buildings,  with 
the  report  that  the  key  to  the  padlocked  door  had  been 
stolen,  and  asked  what  he  should  do.  "Knock  off  a 
board  and  go  in  and  ring  the  bell,"  was  my  father's 
reply.  "And  what  then.'^"  "Leave  the  board  off  and 
go  to  your  recitation."  The  direction  may  have  been, 
and  probably  was,  accompanied  with  some  verbal  ex- 
pression of  faith  in  the  college  boys.  Pranks  with  the 
college  bell  ceased.  They  were  no  longer  worth  while; 
they  were  "too  easy."  When  the  permanent  tower  to 
the  college  chapel  was  completed,  the  question  came  up 
in  faculty  meeting  what  to  do  to  protect  the  bell.    My 


MY  FATHER  143 

father's  proposal  to  leave  the  door  unlocked  and  access 
to  the  bell  open  to  all  was  discarded,  a  lock  was  pro- 
vided, and  the  college  pranks  began  again. 

There  was  a  revival  of  religion  in  the  college.  Some 
of  the  boys  planned  a  mock  prayer-meeting,  and  in 
mere  bravado  invited  Professor  Abbott.  He  surprised 
them  by  appearing  at  the  meeting,  transformed  it  into 
a  serious  meeting,  with,  as  a  result,  the  conversion  of  at 
least  one,  I  believe,  of  several  of  those  who  were  present. 
I  can  well  believe  it  from  my  remembrance  of  his  moral 
power. 

I  do  not  remember  that  he  ever  punished  me.  Yet  I 
not  only  do  not  recall  that  I  ever  thought  of  disobeying 
him,  but  I  do  not  remember  ever  to  have  seen  a  child 
refuse  him  obedience,  and  I  have  seen  him  with  a  great 
many  young  people  of  all  ages  and  all  temperaments. 
This  moral  power.  Professor  Phelps,  of  Andover,  illus- 
trates by  an  incident  narrated  in  a  letter  to  me,  which 
my  brother  Edward  has  inserted  in  his  brief  biography 
of  my  father,  appended  to  the  "Memorial  Edition  of 
the  *  Young  Christian.'"  A  pupil  in  his  school,  of  bril- 
liant parts  but  willful  character,  was  ill  with  typhoid 
fever.  She  refused  to  take  the  remedies  prescribed  for 
her.  Neither  parents,  doctor,  nor  nurse  had  any  in- 
fluence with  her. 

At  length,  as  a  last  resort,  your  father  was  summoned.  He 
took  his  seat  by  her  bed,  took  her  fevered  hand  in  his,  and  for 
some  time  conversed  with  her  on  indifferent  subjects.  When 
he  had  thus  allayed  the  mood  of  resistance  which  the  persua- 
sions of  the  physician  and  the  nurse  had  excited  —  they  mean- 
while having  left  the  room  —  he  said  to  her  something  to  this 
effect:  "The  time  has  come  for  you  to  take  your  medicine, 
and  in  cases  like  this  it  will  not  do  to  be  irregular;  the  reme- 
dies must  be  taken  on  the  hour.''  A  slight  emphasis  on  the 
"must"  gave  her  the  sense  of  superior  authority,  but  a  similar 


144  REMINISCENCES 

stress  on  the  "hour"  diverted  her  mind  from  the  previous  re- 
sistance and  gave  her  a  chance  for  yielding  without  conscious 
humihation.  Relating  the  incident,  years  afterwards,  she 
said  that  she  looked  for  a  moment  into  your  father's  eye,  and 
the  look  of  resolution  in  it  overwhelmed  her.  She  took  the 
bitter  draught  with  the  gentleness  of  a  child.  She  spoke  of  it 
as  illustrating  your  father's  rare  tact  in  uniting  gentle  words 
with  indomitable  authority.  "  I  should  as  soon  have  thought 
of  fighting  with  gravitation,"  she  said,  "as  with  that  eye." 

In  1829  my  father  resigned  his  professorship  in  Am- 
herst to  organize  and  take  charge  of  a  school  in  Boston, 
entitled  the  Mount  Vernon  School,  for  the  higher,  or 
perhaps  it  should  rather  be  said  the  better,  education 
of  girls.  Emma  Willard  had  started  a  school  of  like 
character  at  Waterford,  New  York,  in  1821;  Catherine 
Beecher,  such  a  school  at  Hartford,  Connecticut,  in 
1823;  and  Mary  Lyon  proposed  one  in  1829  or  1830, 
though  her  plan  was  not  carried  into  execution  until 
1837.  My  father  was  thus  one  of  the  pioneers  in  that 
world-wide  movement  for  the  higher  and  broader  edu- 
cation of  women  which,  after  nearly  a  century  of  progress, 
has  given  to  the  daughters  of  America  educational  op- 
portunities not  greatly,  if  at  all,  inferior  to  those  which 
are  afforded  to  their  brothers.  In  the  Mount  Vernon 
School,  however,  if  I  mistake  not,  the  principle  of  re- 
posing trust  and  confidence  in  the  pupils  was  carried 
to  an  extent  wholly  unknown  then,  and  not  too  widely 
understood  or  practiced  even  now.  In  "The  Teacher," 
published  in  1833,  my  father  gave  an  account  of  his 
theory  and  practice  in  teaching,  and  from  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  Mount  Vernon  School,  which  constitutes  a 
chapter  of  the  book,  I  condense  one  significant  in- 
cident. 

Upon  the  wall,  by  the  side  of  his  desk,  hung  a  metallic 
plate  upon  which  were,   in  gilded  letters,  the  words 


MY  FATHER  145 

"Study  Hours."  This  plate  was  attached  on  its  lower 
edge  to  its  support  by  a  hinge,  so  that  it  could  fall  over 
from  above  and  thus  be  in  a  horizontal  position,  or 
could  be  left  resting  in  an  inclined  position,  halfway 
down.  It  was  drawn  up  and  let  down  by  a  pulley,  and 
whenever  it  was  moved,  either  up  or  down,  it  touched  a 
bell,  which  gave  all  the  pupils  notice  of  its  motion. 
"When,"  says  my  father,  in  his  account,  "this  'Study 
Card,'  as  the  scholars  call  it,  is  up,  so  that  the  words 
*  Study  Hours'  are  presented  to  the  view  of  the  school, 
it  is  the  signal  for  silence  and  study.  There  is  then 
TO  be  no  communication  and  no  leaving  of  seats 
except  at  the  direction  of  teachers.  When  it  is 
half  down,  each  scholar  may  leave  her  seat  and  whisper, 
but  she  must  do  nothing  which  will  disturb  others. 
When  it  is  down,  all  the  duties  of  school  are  suspended, 
and  scholars  are  left  entirely  to  their  liberty." 

This  was  the  only  rule  of  the  school;  but  this  rule  was 
absolute;  as  obligatory  on  the  teachers  as  on  the  pupils. 
No  teacher  had  authority  to  modify  it.  She  might  of 
her  own  volition  direct  a  pupil  to  speak  or  to  leave  her 
seat;  but  she  had  no  authority  to  give  a  pupil  permis- 
sion to  do  so  if  the  pupil  requested  it.  My  father  in  his 
report  adds :  — 

I  ought  to  remark,  before  dismissing  this  topic,  that  I  place 
very  great  confidence  in  the  scholars  in  regard  to  their  moral 
conduct  and  deportment,  and  they  fully  deserve  it.  I  have 
no  care  and  no  trouble  in  what  is  commonly  called  the  govern- 
ment of  the  school.  Neither  myself  nor  any  one  else  is  em- 
ployed in  any  way  in  watching  the  scholars,  or  keeping  any 
sort  of  account  of  them.  I  should  not  at  any  time  hesitate  to 
call  all  the  teachers  into  an  adjoining  room,  leaving  the  school 
alone  for  half  an  hour,  and  I  should  be  confident  that,  at  such 
a  time,  order,  and  stillness,  and  attention  to  study  would  pre- 
vail as  much  as  ever.    The  scholars  would  not  look  to  see 


146  REMINISCENCES 

whether  I  was  in  my  desk,  but  whether  the  Study  Card  was 
up.  The  school  was  left  in  this  way,  half  an  hour  every  day, 
during  a  quarter,  that  we  might  have  a  teachers'  meeting,  and 
the  studies  went  on  generally  quite  as  well,  to  say  the  least,  as 
when  the  teachers  were  present. 

I  have  told  this  incident  —  for  it  is  hardly  more  than 
that  —  of  the  Study  Card,  not  because  of  its  inherent 
importance  as  a  method,  but  because  it  illustrates  the 
s'pirit  which  inspired  that  method. 

Since  this  chapter  was  published  in  "The  Outlook" 
I  have  received  a  letter  from  one  of  my  father's  pupils 
in  his  school  in  New  York  City  which  serves  still  fur- 
ther to  illustrate  that  spirit  and  to  indicate  that  his 
confidence  in  the  self-control  of  the  girls  under  his  in- 
fluence was  not  misplaced.     She  writes:  — 

One  instance  alone  will  show  his  influence  over  us.  He  had 
the  direct  charge  of  a  room  of  some  fifty  or  sixty  young  girls, 
among  whom  I  was,  I  think,  the  youngest.  He  told  us  one 
morning  that  he  had  been  suddenly  called  to  Farmington  by 
the  illness  of  your  grandfather.  Your  Uncle  John  was  ill  at 
the  time,  and  your  father  could  make  no  provision  for  the  care 
of  our  room.  He  said  to  us :  "I  can  make  provision  for  your 
recitations,  and  the  bells  for  their  time  will  ring  as  usual,  but 
I  must  leave  the  order  of  the  room  to  your  own  care.  I  shall 
be  absent  at  least  a  week,  perhaps  longer,  but  I  trust  you  to  do 
just  as  you  would  if  I  were  here."  Your  father  was  gone,  as  I 
remember  it,  about  three  weeks,  and  the  order  of  our  room 
during  the  whole  time  was  as  good  as  if  he  had  been  present. 
When  I  remember  the,  to  say  the  least,  lively  spirits  pos- 
sessed by  some  of  us,  I  realize  the  extent  of  your  father's  in- 
fluence. Every  girl  in  that  room  would  have  felt  herself 
disgraced  if  she  had  not  done  in  Mr.  Jacob's  absence  what 
she  would  have  done  in  his  presence. 

My  father,  in  his  dealing  with  his  pupils,  with  his 
teachers,  with  all  his  employees,  and  with  his  own  chil- 
dren, was  accustomed  in  a  similar  spirit  to  throw  upon 


MY  FATHER  147 

them  to  an  extraordinary  degree  the  responsibihty  for 
their  own  lives,  not  in  the  faith  that  they  would  never 
make  mistakes  or  do  wrong,  but  in  the  faith  that  the 
only  way  to  develop  the  judgment  and  the  conscience 
is  to  require  each  individual  to  take  counsel  with  his 
own  conscience  and  his  own  judgment.  I  have  already 
furnished  one  illustration  of  this  habit  —  his  leaving 
me  at  the  age  of  thirteen  to  decide  whether  I  would  go 
to  college,  and,  if  so,  to  what  college.  Other  illustrations 
will  appear  later  in  this  narrative. 

In  "The  Teacher"  my  father  discusses  at  consider- 
able length  and  with  some  fullness  of  illustration  the 
principle  by  which  a  teacher  should  be  governed  in  re- 
ligious instruction.  That  principle  he  states  in  the  fol- 
lowing words:  "He  is  employed  for  a  specific  purpose, 
and  he  has  no  right  to  wander  from  that  purpose,  except 
as  far  as  he  can  go  with  the  common  consent  of  his  em- 
ployers." Applying  this  principle,  he  held  that  he  had 
a  right  and  a  duty  to  inculcate  so  much  of  religious 
truth  as  was  commonly  received  as  true  in  the  city  of 
Boston,  where  the  Mount  Vernon  School  was  situated. 
For  this  purpose  he  gave  on  Saturday  afternoons,  to 
such  pupils  as  desired  to  attend,  some  informal  conver- 
sational lectures  on  the  subject  of  the  Christian  religion. 
These  lectures  he  wrote  out  —  whether  before  or  after 
delivery,  or  some  before  and  some  after  delivery,  I  do 
not  know  —  and  they  were  published  in  the  early  sum- 
mer of  1832  under  the  title  "The  Young  Christian." 
Two  years  later  this  volume  was  followed  by  "The 
Corner-Stone."  "The  Young  Christian"  was  intended 
"  to  present  in  a  plain  and  very  practical  manner  a  view 
of  some  of  the  great  fundamental  truths  of  revealed  re- 
ligion on  which  the  superstructure  of  Christian  character 
necessarily  reposes."    In  writing  these  works  it  was  my 


148  REMINISCENCES 

father's  practice  to  come  home  from  the  school  in  the 
afternoon,  take  a  light  supper,  go  almost  immediately 
to  bed,  rise  about  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  write 
till  half  an  hour  before  breakfast,  throw  himself  on  the 
bed  for  a  nap,  and,  after  the  refreshment  of  the  nap  and 
the  breakfast,  go  to  his  school  duties  again.  During  this 
time  he  was  generally  engaged  in  preaching  on  Sundays, 
and  during  the  year  1834  was  acting  as  pastor  of  a  Con- 
gregational church  in  Roxbury  which  was  being  or- 
ganized under  his  direction.  As  soon,  however,  as  the 
church  building  for  its  use  was  completed  he  resigned 
the  pastorate,  and  his  brother,  J.  S.  C.  Abbott,  was 
called  to  succeed  him.  Both  "The  Young  Christian" 
and  "The  Corner-Stone"  attracted  immediate  atten- 
tion in  religious  circles;  they  were  reprinted  in  England, 
both  in  authorized  and  unauthorized  editions,  and  in 
some  of  them  with  revisions  to  make  them  conform  to 
the  orthodox  ideas  of  their  editors.  Both  fell  under  the 
ban  of  orthodox  critics,  especially  in  England.  One  of 
these  criticisms  led  to  the  following  incident. 

The  age  was  one  of  theological  restlessness.  In  Amer- 
ica the  older  Calvinism  and  the  newer  Calvinism  were 
engaged  in  a  struggle  which  ended  in  the  disruption  of 
the  Presbyterian  Church  in  1838  into  the  Old  School 
and  the  New  School  churches;  and  would  have  led  to 
the  disruption  of  the  Congregational  churches  if  there 
had  been  any  ecclesiastical  organization  to  disrupt.  In 
many  places  the  fellowship  in  that  denomination  be- 
tween the  progressive  and  the  conservative  wings  was 
more  nominal  than  real.  In  England  a  similar  struggle 
between  the  old  and  the  new  took  place  within  the 
Church  of  England,  giving  rise  to  the  organized  Oxford 
Movement  and  the  unorganized  Broad  Church  Move- 
ment.   Both  parties  were  dissatisfied  with  existing  con- 


MY  FATHER  149 

ditions.  One  sought  rest  by  going  back  to  an  earlier 
tradition  and  a  greater  church  authority;  the  other  by 
going  forward  to  a  newer  thought  and  a  larger  liberty. 
It  was  the  age  of  Newman  and  Pusey  and  Keble  on  the 
one  side,  and  of  Maurice  and  Stanley  and  Eangsley  on 
the  other.  It  was  dramatically  illustrated  by  the  life 
histories  of  the  brothers  Newman  and  the  brothers 
Froude,  all  four  Oxford  men.  John  Henry  Newman  and 
Richard  Hurrell  Froude  took  the  path  which  led  back 
to  Rome,  though  Mr.  Froude  did  not  live  to  finish 
the  journey;  Francis  William  Newman  and  James 
Anthony  Froude,  both  originally  Churchmen,  took  a 
path  which  led  them  to  abandon  the  Church  and  its 
traditions  altogether,  and  substitute  a  theistic  for  a 
Christian  faith. 

If  this  were  history,  not  merely  personal  reminiscences, 
it  would  be  interesting  to  trace  the  connection  between 
this  theological  ferment  and  the  simultaneous  political 
ferment.  In  both  the  same  fundamental  issue  was  in- 
volved :  the  age-long  issue  between  tradition  and  reason, 
authority  and  liberty,  the  organization  and  the  indi- 
vidual. Here  a  single  sentence  from  John  Henry  New- 
man's autobiography  must  suffice  as  an  illustration.  He 
writes:  "There  had  been  a  Revolution  in  France;  the 
Bourbons  had  been  dismissed;  and  I  held  that  it  was 
unchristian  for  nations  to  cast  off  their  governors,  and, 
much  more,  sovereigns  who  had  the  divine  right  of  in- 
heritance." The  temperament  which  led  him  to  this 
political  conclusion  led  irresistibly  and  inevitably  to  a 
like  conclusion  in  theology:  "From  the  age  of  fifteen," 
he  writes,  "dogma  has  been  the  fundamental  principle 
of  my  religion;  I  know  no  other  religion;  I  cannot  enter 
into  the  idea  of  any  other  sort  of  religion;  religion,  as  a 
mere  sentiment,  is  to  me  a  dream  and  a  mockery." 


J 


150  REMINISCENCES 

At  the  time  when  "The  Comer-Stone"  appeared, 
the  leaders  of  the  High  Church  party  in  England  had 
commenced  the  publication  of  a  series  of  "Tracts  for 
the  Times,"  which  has  given  to  the  movement  the  title 
of  Tractarianism.  One  of  these  tracts  was  devoted 
largely  to  a  review  of  my  father's  "Corner-Stone."  It 
was  written  by  John  Henry  Newman,  then  a  clergyman 
of  the  Church  of  England,  later  to  become  Cardinal 
Newman  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  In  this  re- 
view, as  under  such  circumstances  might  well  have  been 
expected,  the  book  was  very  severely  criticised,  and  its 
author  was  adjudged  guilty  of  heresy  as  a  Socinian,  that 
is,  a  radical  Unitarian,  with  pantheistic  tendencies. 
Words  of  commendation  for  beauty  of  style  were  not 
wanting;  nor  in  the  spirit  and  manner  of  expression  did 
the  tract  transgress  the  bounds  of  legitimate  criticism. 
But  for  the  doctrines  taught  the  writer  of  the  tract  had 
only  the  severest  reprobation.  In  it  Dr.  Newman  seems 
to  me  to  deny  that  Jesus  had  or  could  have  had  any 
human  experiences.  One  quotation  from  this  tract  must 
here  suffice  to  indicate  the  difference  between  my  father's 
point  of  view  and  Dr.  Newman's.  It  is  characteristic 
of  the  spirit  of  the  tract:  — 

J.  A.  —  We  learn  in  the  same  manner  how  distinct  were 
the  impressions  of  beauty  or  sublimity  which  the  works  of 
nature  made  upon  the  Saviour,  by  the  manner  in  which  he 
alluded  to  them.  .  .  .  Look  at  the  lilies  of  the  field,  says  he. 
...  A  cold,  heartless  man,  without  taste  or  sensibility,  would 
not  have  said  such  a  thing  as  that.  He  could  not;  and  we  may 
be  as  sure  that  Jesus  Christ  had  stopped  to  examine  and  ad- 
mire the  grace  and  beauty  of  the  plant,  etc.    (Pp.  61,  62.) 

Now  Jesus  Christ  noticed  these  things.  He  perceived  their 
beauty  and  enjoyed  it.    (P.  62.) 

J.  H.  N.  —  Surely  such  passages  as  these  are  simply  in- 
consistent with  faith  in  the  Son  of  God.    Does  any  one  feel 


MY  FATHER  151 

curiosity  or  wonder,  does  any  one  search  and  examine,  in  the 
case  of  things  fully  known  to  him?  Could  the  Creator  of 
nature  "stop  to  examine"  and  "enjoy  the  grace  and  beauty" 
of  His  own  work? 

When  my  father  went  to  Europe  in  1843,  he  visited 
Oxford  and  took  the  opportunity  which  this  visit  afforded 
to  make  a  friendly  call  on  the  author  of  this  tract.  This 
was  about  two  years  before  Dr.  Newman  finally  en- 
tered the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  but  only  about  six 
weeks  before  he  withdrew  from  the  ministry  of  the 
Established  Church  because  of  his  convictions  against 
the  Protestantism  of  that  Church.  It  is  true  that  my 
father  supposed  the  author  of  the  critique  to  be  Dr. 
Pusey;  but  it  is  also  true  that  he  knew  that  the  theo- 
logical views  of  Dr.  Pusey  and  Dr.  Newman  were  in  ac- 
cord, and  that  this  tract  represented  the  opinions  of  the 
one  as  truly  as  those  of  the  other.  In  the  journal  which 
he  kept  of  this  trip,  not  for  publication,  but  for  his  own 
remembrance  and  for  his  especial  friends  at  home,  he 
wrote  the  following  account  of  this  visit :  — 

I  understood  that  Dr.  Pusey  was  probably  not  in  town  and 
that  certainly  he  would  not  preach,  but  that  Mr.  Newman 
would  probably  preach  either  at  St.  Mary's,  the  University 
church,  in  Oxford,  or  at  Littlemore,  a  small  village  two  or  three 
miles  out  of  town.  I  went  to  St.  Mary's  Church,  and  was  there 
told  that  he  would  not  preach  in  Oxford  that  day.  So  I  set  off 
to  walk  to  Littlemore.  I  passed  along  High  Street  —  by  the 
University  church  and  Magdalen  College.  Thence  over  the 
bridge  and  by  the  toll-gate,  which  ushered  me  into  the  coun- 
try. I  found  a  smooth,  straight,  and  level  road,  with  a  broad 
sidewalk  upon  its  margin  of  gravel,  which  overlooked  a  wide 
extent  of  green  and  waving  fields  on  each  side.  There  was  no 
fence  between  the  road  and  the  fields. 

I  walked  on  a  mile  or  two,  when  a  shower  of  rain  came  on. 
Here  there  were  hedges.  A  lady  and  some  children  were 
standing  under  the  lee  of  a  hedge  by  the  roadside,  for  shelter. 


152  REMINISCENCES 

There  was  a  house  near,  but  they  seemed  not  to  have  confi- 
dence enough  in  English  hospitality  to  ask  for  shelter  there. 
I  asked  them  my  way,  and  the  lady  answered  in  few  words  and 
with  averted  looks,  which  seemed  to  say,  "  I  will  give  you  a  civil 
answer,  but  I  wish  to  have  as  little  to  say  to  you  as  possible." 
How  different,  thought  I,  would  have  been  the  tone  and  look  in 
France ! 

I  left  them  huddling  under  their  umbrella  and  hedge,  and 
went  on.  The  rain  increased,  and  I  sought  shelter  under  a 
thicket  at  the  foot  of  a  little  bridge. 

After  the  shower  I  went  on,  but  lost  my  way,  and  went  to 
Iffley.  Two  girls  directed  me  by  a  path  across  the  fields  to 
Littlemore,  where  I  found  the  church. 

It  was  now  fifteen  minutes  before  the  time  for  service,  and  I 
strolled  into  the  church,  which  was  empty.  A  sexton  told  me 
that  all  the  seats  were  free.  The  church  was  a  very  plain-look- 
ing building,  intended  evidently  for  a  very  humble  class  of 
worshipers.  The  walls  were  plastered  in  imitation  of  stone, 
the  timbers  of  the  roof  were  bare.  The  windows  were  narrow 
slips  in  the  style  of  ancient  castles,  so  that  the  interior  had  a 
gloomy  expression.  The  pulpit  was  on  one  side  against  the 
wall.  Opposite  to  it,  on  the  other  side,  was  an  organ  inclosed 
in  a  curtain  instead  of  a  case.  The  reading-desk  was  in  front 
of  the  organ.  The  altar  was  behind,  at  the  farther  end  of  the 
church,  and  the  clergyman,  Mr.  Newman,  his  curate,  and  one 
other,  who  all  took  part  in  the  services,  turned  their  faces 
towards  the  altar  during  parts  of  the  exercises.  The  house  was 
entirely  filled  when  the  congregation  came  in,  and  they  all 
joined  in  the  responses  with  an  apparent  cordiality  and  in- 
terest much  greater  than  I  have  usually  witnessed  in  Episco- 
pal churches.  Mr.  Newman's  manner  was  plain,  simple,  and 
unaffected  in  the  extreme.  His  sermon  was  a  homily  on  the 
sins  of  the  tongue,  read,  however,  with  a  careless  and  absent 
air. 

At  noon  I  walked  into  the  village  till  I  reached  a  little  inn 
called  the  George  Inn. 

There  were  some  persons  sitting  in  a  kind  of  bar-room  in 
front,  but  they  invited  me  into  a  neat  little  back  parlor  which 
opened  in  a  yard  planted  with  flowers  and  shrubbery.  I  called 
for  some  coffee,  and  whiled  away  the  time  as  well  as  I  could  till 


MY  FATHER  153 

the  afternoon  service.     Ten  minutes  of  the  time  was  occu- 
pied in  inditing  the  following  note  to  Mr.  Newman: 

George  Inn,  Jvly  — . 
Rev.  Sir:  — 

Being  on  a  visit  for  a  day  or  two  in  Oxford,  on  a  rapid  tour 
through  England,  I  came  out  this  morning  to  attend  service 
in  your  chapel,  and,  if  you  would  not  consider  it  an  intrusion, 
I  should  be  happy  to  have  the  opportunity  of  calling  to  pay 
my  respects  to  you  personally  at  any  hour  which  may  be  most 
convenient  and  agreeable  to  you  before  to-morrow  noon,  when 
I  propose  returning  to  London. 

Please  excuse  the  liberty  I  take,  and  believe  me  to  be  yours 
with  sincere  respect, 

Jacob  Abbott. 

I  went  to  church  in  the  afternoon,  feeling  great  uncertainty 
whether  it  would  be  well  to  send  my  note  or  not.  It  seemed 
clear  that  it  was  in  fact  wise,  but  I  shrunk  very  much  from 
taking  such  a  step.  However,  after  the  service  I  returned  to 
the  hotel  and  sent  my  note.  In  a  short  time  I  received  an 
answer  expressed  in  very  courteous  and  friendly  terms,  but 
saying  that  Mr.  N.  was  engaged  at  that  hour,  but  would  see 
me  either  that  evening  at  a  quarter  past  eight  or  on  the  follow- 
ing morning.  I  concluded  to  wait  and  have  the  interview  that 
evening.  So  I  called  for  coffee  again,  and  with  the  help  of  it 
and  some  books  which  I  had  in  my  pocket  I  contrived  to  pass 
the  time  until  the  appointed  hour.  I  then  repaired  to  Mr. 
Newman's  dwelling,  which  was  a  long,  low  building. 

The  external  appearance  of  the  house  was  entirely  devoid 
of  symmetry.  It  was  intermediate  between  a  warehouse  and  a 
range  of  cloisters.  I  rang  at  a  door  which  I  found  in  one  side 
near  the  corner,  and  was  ushered  into  a  narrow  and  intricate 
passageway  which  led  into  a  sort  of  anteroom.  I  met  a  com- 
pany of  young  men  having  the  appearance  of  a  class  of  stu- 
dents who  were  coming  from  Mr.  N.'s  study,  apparently  from 
some  exercise  which  he  had  been  conducting. 

From  this  anteroom  I  entered  the  study.  It  was  a  large, 
somber-looking  room;  the  walls  were  entirely  filled  with  books, 
many  of  which  were  very  ponderous  and  ancient-looking 
tomes.     There  was  a  plain  but  antique-looking  table  in  the 


154  REMINISCENCES 

middle  of  the  room.  Mr.  Newman  received  me  very  cordially. 
At  first  there  was  an  air  of  some  constraint,  as  I  imagined, 
with  an  effort,  very  proper  under  the  circumstances,  on  his 
part,  to  keep  the  conversation  away  from  religious  topics.  I, 
however,  was  determined  not  to  lose  the  object  of  my  visit 
now,  and  forcibly  introduced  the  subject  of  the  Tracts  and  the 
Oxford  views.  I  told  him  that  one  principal  object  which  I 
had  in  calling  upon  him  was  to  speak  of  the  Tracts,  and  par- 
ticularly of  the  strictures  which  some  of  the  writers  had  made 
upon  my  own  writings.  I  told  him  that  the  presumption  al- 
ways was  in  such  cases  that  when  an  author  was  made  the 
subject  of  such  criticisms  he  of  course  resisted  and  resented 
them  —  but  that  I  did  not.  On  the  contrary,  I  was  aware  that 
the  criticisms  were  in  many  respects  just,  though  severe,  and 
that  they  would  have  modified  in  many  respects  my  manner  of 
expressing  my  opinions,  if  not  the  views  themselves,  if  I  had 
had  access  to  them  before  the  pubhcation  of  the  writings  in 
question. 

Then  followed  considerable  conversation,  which  lasted  for 
an  hour.  I  expressed  distinctly  the  views  which  prevailed 
among  the  Congregationalists  of  New  England  averse  to  the 
establishment  or  perpetuation  of  an  ecclesiastical  power,  and 
that  the  unity  which  we  seek  for  is  a  unity  of  feeling,  a  harmony 
and  cooperation  among  all  different  forms  and  organizations 
of  Christians. 

I  rose  to  go,  and  he  asked  me  to  sit  a  moment  longer.  He 
went  out,  and  presently  returned  with  a  volume  of  his  writings 
which  he  offered  me.  I  told  him  that  I  would  value  it  more 
if  he  would  write  my  name  in  it,  as  from  him.  He  smiled  and 
went  out  of  the  room  again,  and  presently  returned  and  gave 
me  the  book  again.  After  some  farther  pleasant  conversation 
I  rose  again  to  go,  and  he  took  his  hat  as  if  to  accompany  me. 
At  the  door  I  was  about  bidding  him  good-by  when  he  said  that 
he  would  go  with  me  a  little  way  to  put  me  into  the  right  road. 
He  conducted  me  by  a  cross-road  through  the  fields,  which 
he  said  was  nearer  than  the  highway.  After  walking  perhaps 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  we  came  to  a  gate  which  opened  upon  the 
main  road,  where  he  gave  me  his  hand,  saying,  "Good-by. 
God  bless  you.    I  am  very  glad  you  came  to  see  me." 

I  ought  to  have  mentioned  that  in  the  course  of  conversa- 


MY  FATHER  155 

tion  he  informed  me  that  Dr.  Pusey  was  not  the  author  of  the 
Tract  which  criticised  my  writings,  as  I  had  understood.  I 
told  him  that  I  had  been  informed  that  Dr.  P.  was  the  author, 
and  on  that  account  I  desired  to  see  Dr.  P.  himself,  and  was 
sorry  to  leam  that  he  was  out  of  town.  A  little  farther  on  in 
the  conversation  he  told  me  that  he  himself  was  the  author. 
He  said,  moreover,  that  if  there  was  anything  in  the  review 
which  I  considered  unjust  to  myself  personally,  or  anything 
in  which  I  was  misunderstood,  he  wished  that  I  would  let  him 
know,  that  it  might  be  corrected  in  a  subsequent  edition. 

After  I  left  him  I  walked  on  feeling  very  much  reheved.  I 
stopped  under  a  lamp-post  to  read  what  he  had  written  in  the 
book,  which  relieved  me  still  more. 

Dr.  Newman  in  a  note  appended  to  his  tract  on  "The 
Corner-Stone,"  reprinted  in  his  volume  of  "Essays, 
Critical  and  Historical,"  reports  the  impression  that  this 
interview  produced  upon  him,  and  this  report  is  neces- 
sary to  make  the  account  of  this  incident  complete:  — 

The  author  of  the  second  of  the  works  criticised  in  the  fore- 
going essay  met  my  strictures  with  Christian  forbearance  and 
a  generosity  which  I  never  can  forget.  He  went  out  of  his  way, 
when  in  England,  in  1843,  to  find  me  out,  at  Littlemore,  and 
to  give  me  the  assurance,  both  by  that  act  and  by  word  of 
mouth,  that  he  did  not  take  offense  at  what  many  a  man  would 
have  thought  justified  serious  displeasure.  I  think  he  felt 
what  really  was  the  case,  that  I  had  no  unkind  feelings  towards 
him,  but  spoke  of  his  work  simply  in  illustration  of  a  widely 
spread  sentiment  in  religious  circles,  then  as  now,  which 
seemed  to  ijae  dangerous  to  gospel  faith. 

I  have  given  here  at  considerable  length  this  incident, 
not  only  because  of  its  inherent  historical  interest,  but 
also  because  it  illustrates  in  so  striking  a  manner  that 
spirit  in  my  father  which  made  him  in  the  best  sense  of 
the  term  a  "peacemaker."  My  father  made  no  change 
in  "The  Comer-Stone"  after  this  visit;  Dr.  Newman 
made  none  in  his  tract.   It  would  not  be  easy  to  find  an- 


156  REMINISCENCES 

other  instance  in  theological  controversy  in  which  a 
theologian  strongly  criticised  called  upon  his  critic, 
/  not  to  complain,  defend,  or  debate,  but  as  an  expres- 
sion of  his  regard;  and,  when  as  a  result,  without  any 
change  in  the  views  of  either,  the  two  representa- 
tives of  the  opposing  schools  parted  in  mutual  amity 
and  respect. 

In  this  same  spirit  my  father  acted  throughout  his 
life.  Many  years  after,  when  I  had  preached  during  the 
Civil  War  a  vigorous  anti-slavery  sermon  in  a  com- 
munity in  which  abolitionism  was  much  more  odious 
than  slavery,  he  wrote  me  a  letter  of  counsel  in  which  he 
interpreted  in  words  the  principle  interpreted  by  his 
action  in  the  Newman  incident :  — 

You  have  given  a  full,  fair,  honest,  and  uncompromising 
exposition  of  what  I  believe  to  be  the  true  doctrine  in  respect 
to  the  condition  of  the  country.  There  let  the  subject  rest. 
If  any  one  calls  in  question  what  you  have  said,  do  not  defend 
it.  Listen  attentively  and  respectfully  to  the  other  side,  and 
admit  the  truth  of  what  is  said  in  so  far  as  it  is  true.  So  far  as 
it  is  false,  say  nothing  about  it.  Lean  as  far  towards  the  views 
of  your  opponents  as  you  can  without  retracting  or  compro- 
mising your  own  views. 

That  I  have  been  able  to  live  on  terms  of  friendship 
with  men  of  widely  differing  views  on  political,  social, 
and  religious  subjects,  while  taking  an  active  part  in  the 
sometimes  warm  debates  concerning  those  subjects,  I 
attribute  largely  to  the  fact  that  I  have  generally  tried 
to  follow  my  father's  counsel  and  example,  and  to 
maintain  something  of  his  spirit. 

One  other  incident  in  my  father's  life  must  finish  this 
introduction  of  him  to  my  readers. 

After  the  death  of  his  wife,  it  will  be  remembered,  he 
removed  to  New  York  to  join  his  brothers  in  opening 
in  that  city  a  school  for  young  ladies,  leaving  his  young- 


MY  FATHER  157 

est  son,  Edward,  at  the  old  homestead  in  Farmington, 
Maine,  with  his  grandfather,  grandmother,  and  two 
aunts.  A  httle  later  Austin  and  I  joined  Edward  there. 
Instead  of  writing  separate  letters  to  us,  or  one  letter  to 
one  member  of  the  family  with  messages  to  the  others, 
my  father  edited  and  sent  to  us  about  once  a  month  a 
paper  which  he  entitled  "The  Morton  Street  Gazette," 
taking  the  name  from  the  street  in  which  he  lived.  This 
was  written  on  a  sheet  of  letter  paper,  ruled  in  two  col- 
umns, with  a  heading  written  to  look  like  the  heading  of 
a  newspaper.  Its  character  is  indicated  by  the  opening 
editorial  in  the  first  issue :  — 

With  the  commencement  of  the  new  year  we  propose  to  es- 
tablish a  new  paper  of  a  very  high  character.  It  will  advocate 
the  soundest  principles  —  that  is,  when  it  has  occasion  to  ad- 
vocate any.  It  will  contain  all  the  latest  news  from  Morton 
Street,  Lafayette  Place,  and  Colonnade  Row.  Its  circulation 
is  expected  to  be  select  rather  than  extensive. 

Colonnade  Row,  in  Lafayette  Place,  was  the  house 
my  Uncle  John  occupied  at  that  time,  and  was  also  the 
boarding  department  of  the  school.  The  "Gazette" 
contained  various  items  of  family  news  likely  to  interest 
my  father's  parents  or  sisters.  Occasionally  my  oldest 
brother,  Vaughan,  who  was  living  in  New  York,  wrote 
a  contribution  for  it.  There  was  always  a  special  article 
for  the  children.  For  example,  three  issues  contained 
papers  entitled  "Code  Barbarian."  From  this  Code  I 
make  some  extracts,  because  they  illustrate  my  father's 
understanding  of  children  and  one  of  his  characteristic 
methods  of  giving  them  moral  instruction :  — 

THE   CODE   BARBARIAN 

1.  When  you  come  in  from  sliding  leave  your  sled  in  the 
yard  upon  the  snow.    It  will  rust  the  irons  a  little  and  prevent 


158  REMINISCENCES 

its  going  too  fast  when  you  go  out  to  slide  next  time.   You  may 
save  breaking  your  neck  by  this  means. 

6.  Whenever  you  have  been  using  the  hoes  or  the  shovels 
or  any  other  tools,  leave  them  anywhere  about  the  yard.  There 
is  plenty  of  room  for  them  on  the  ground. 

7.  If  you  get  an  invitation  to  a  visit  up  in  town,  if  you 
make  as  much  difficulty  and  trouble  as  you  can  about  dressing 
properly  before  you  go,  and  then  are  rude  and  noisy  when  you 
get  there,  it  will  do  a  great  deal  towards  preventing  your  being 
troubled  with  future  invitations. 

8.  If  you  lose  your  knife  or  anything,  it  is  a  convenient  plan 
to  tell  some  other  boy  that  you  lent  it  to  him  one  day  and  you 
have  not  seen  it  since.  This  throws  off  the  responsibility  on 
his  shoulders.  So,  if  you  cannot  find  your  hat,  you  can  insist 
upon  it  that  you  certainly  hung  it  up  on  its  nail. 

10.  If  you  get  a  new  knife,  or  if  you  borrow  one,  go  to  bor- 
ing a  hole  with  the  point  or  to  digging  out  a  boat.  The  advan- 
tage of  this  is  that  you  will  soon  break  the  point,  and  after  that 
you  will  be  in  no  danger  of  pricking  yourself. 

To  those  familiar  with  my  father's  books  for  children 
I  may  add  that  the  spirit  and  methods  of  Jonas  in  the 
Rollo  Books  and  of  Beechnut  in  the  Franconia  Stories 
illustrate  my  father's  spirit  and  his  methods  in  dealing 
with  children.  Of  this  aspect  of  his  life  and  character  I 
shall  have  occasion  to  speak  more  fully  hereafter  in  giv- 
ing some  account  of  his  dealing  with  his  grandchildren. 
In  my  next  chapter  I  shall  resume  my  narrative  at  the 
point  where  I  interrupted  it  in  order  to  give  to  the 
reader  this  introduction  to  my  father,  who  was  also  my 
professor  in  theology. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FEWACRES   THEOLOGICAL   SEMINARY 

ON  the  6th  of  September,  1859,  I  bade  good-by  to 
my  brothers  and  their  New  York  offices,  to  my 
home  and  friends  in  Brooklyn,  to  my  profession 
and  my  professional  ambitions,  and  with  my  wife  and 
child  took  the  steamer  for  Portland,  and  thence  the  rail- 
way and  stage-coach  to  Farmington.  My  father  and  his 
wife,  my  stepmother,  were  still  at  Fewacres  when  I  ar- 
rived there,  and  the  five  weeks  during  which  he  remained 
there  I  took  as  a  vacation.  He  was  very  fond  of  land- 
scape architecture  of  a  simple  sort,  and  I  worked  with 
him  on  the  grounds,  making  paths,  trimming  up  trees 
and  shrubs  and  the  like,  and  doing  only  some  incidental 
reading.  But  these  five  weeks  with  him  were  among 
the  most  profitable  of  my  life.  For  he  not  only  gave  me 
some  specific  counsels  which  have  remained  with  me 
ever  since,  but  also,  without  my  realizing  it  then,  as  I 
have  realized  it  since,  he  laid  for  me,  by  his  thoughts, 
the  foundations  of  much  of  my  theological  thinking, 
and,  by  his  personal  character  and  influence,  the  founda- 
tions of  much  of  my  religious  experience. 

"If  I  were  a  preacher,"  he  said,  "I  would  make  my 
first  sermon  of  any  convenient  length.  The  next  Sun- 
day I  would  make  it  five  minutes  shorter,  and  I  would 
continue  to  take  off  five  minutes  until  the  people  com- 
plained that  my  sermons  were  too  short.  Then  I  would 
take  five  minutes  off  from  that,  and  the  result  should 


160  REMINISCENCES 

give  me  my  standard,"  This  counsel  was  emphasized 
by  the  saying  of  a  Methodist  minister  to  me  when  I  was 
ordained  in  the  following  spring,  "I  have  resolved  not 
to  attempt  to  make  myself  immortal  by  being  eternal." 

I  never  followed  literally  my  father's  counsel;  but  I 
have  acted  in  accordance  with  its  spirit.  When,  in  1887, 
I  was  invited  to  undertake  the  supply  of  the  pulpit  of 
Plymouth  Church  in  Brooklyn,  on  the  death  of  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  I  was  quite  conscious  that  I  never  could 
preach  as  great  sermons  as  Mr.  Beecher,  but  I  knew 
that  I  could  preach  shorter  ones.  He  usually  preached 
from  an  hour  to  an  hour  and  a  quarter;  and  the  con- 
gregation was  surprised  to  find  his  successor's  ser- 
mons half  that  length  —  very  rarely  over  thirty-five 
minutes,  and  not  infrequently  twenty-five.  What  con- 
gregations have  said  behind  my  back  I  do  not  know; 
but  many  have  complained  to  me  that  my  sermons 
were  too  short,  and  I  have  always  regarded  the  criti- 
cism as  a  compliment. 

My  father's  second  counsel  respected  the  method  of 
a  preacher's  approach  to  his  congregation.  "It  is,"  he 
said,  "a  principle  of  mechanics  that,  if  an  object  is  at 
one  point  and  you  wish  to  take  it  to  another  point,  you 
must  carry  it  through  all  the  intermediate  points.  Re- 
member that  this  is  also  a  principle  in  morals.  If  your 
congregation  is  at  one  point  and  you  wish  to  bring  them 
to  another  point,  you  must  carry  them  through  all  the 
intermediate  points." 

The  minister  must  be  enough  of  an  opportunist  to 
adapt  his  teaching  to  the  audience  which  he  addresses. 
If  a  locomotive  were  to  start  at  sixty  miles  an  hour,  it 
would  break  the  coupling  and  leave  the  train  standing 
on  the  track.  This  is  what  has  often  happened  to  radical 
preachers.   I  have  no  moral  respect  for  the  preacher  who 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      161 

is  contented  to  be  a  phonograph  and  repeat  from  the 
pulpit  on  Sunday  the  sentiments  and  experiences  which 
he  has  gathered  from  his  congregation  during  the  week. 
But  I  have  also  scant  respect  for  the  preacher  who  makes 
no  study  of  the  sentiments,  opinions,  or  even  prejudices 
of  his  congregation,  and  excuses  his  laziness  by  quoting 
the  text:  "And  thou  shalt  say  unto  them.  Thus  saith 
the  Lord  God.  And  they,  whether  they  will  hear,  or 
whether  they  will  forbear  (for  they  are  a  rebellious 
house),  yet  shall  know  that  there  hath  been  a  prophet 
among  them."  I  believe  that  the  pulpit  is  the  freest 
platform  in  America  —  freer  than  either  the  editorial 
page  or  the  political  rostrum.  But  he  who  would  profit 
by  that  freedom  and  make  it  profitable  to  others  as  well 
must  study  his  congregation  and  treat  their  precon- 
ceived opinions  with  respect.  He  cannot  expect  that 
they  will  understand  him  if  he  has  made  no  attempt  to 
understand  them,  nor  that  he  can  in  half  an  hour  conduct 
them  through  all  the  transitions  of  thought  which  it 
has  taken  him  months,  and  perhaps  years,  of  study  to 
make  for  himself. 

My  father's  third  counsel  respected  the  cause  of  secta- 
rian differences  and  the  secret  of  Christian  unity.  "I 
am  convinced,"  he  said,  "that  nine-tenths  of  the  con- 
troversies which  have  agitated  the  religious  world  have 
been  controversies  about  words,  and  I  rather  think  the 
other  tenth  has  been  also." 

I  thought  at  the  time  that  this  was  rather  extreme, 
but  an  incident  occurring  in  my  life  many  years  after 
led  me  to  think  that  it  is  almost  literally  true.  I  told  the 
story  to  an  agnostic,  and  accompanied  it  with  a  qualifica- 
tion. "There  is  one  diifference,"  I  said  to  him,  "which 
I  do  not  think  is  merely  a  difference  about  words  — 
that  between  the  mystic  and  the  rationalist.    The  ra- 


162  REMINISCENCES 

tionalist  believes  that  we  can  know  nothing  which  we 
cannot  perceive  through  the  senses  —  cannot  see,  hear, 
touch,  or  smell;  the  mystic  believes  that  we  have  direct 
and  immediate  knowledge  of  an  invisible  world.  I  am  a 
mystic."  "And  I,"  he  replied,  "am  a  rationalist;  I  be- 
lieve that  all  our  knowledge  is  derived  through  the 
senses.  But  I  believe  that  there  is  a  great  domain  which 
we  enter  through  the  faith  faculty."  And  I  said  to  my- 
self, "My  father  was  more  nearly  right  than  I  thought. 
What  I  call  knowledge  my  agnostic  friend  calls  domain." 
Acting  on  this  principle,  it  has  become  a  second  nature 
to  me  to  avoid  all  the  technical  terms  of  scholastic 
theology,  what  one  of  my  friends  calls  "the  patois  of 
Canaan"  —  such  words  as  Trinity,  Atonement,  Vica- 
rious Sacrifice,  Regeneration,  Decrees,  Foreordination, 
Plenary  Inspiration,  and  the  like.  These  words  are 
battle-flags,  and  the  moment  the  word  is  raised  preju- 
dice rushes  in  to  attack  it,  and  prejudice,  often  no  more 
intelligent,  rushes  in  to  defend  it.  In  consequence  the 
religious  teacher  finds  himself  involved  in  a  theological 
tournament,  which  never  was  profitable,  and  in  our 
time  is  not  even  interesting.  The  adoption  of  these  two 
fundamental  principles  —  an  understanding  of  the  au- 
dience coupled  with  a  real  respect  for  their  convictions, 
an  honest  endeavor  to  adapt  my  teaching  not  to  their 
likes  but  to  their  needs,  and  an  instinctive  omission  of 
all  words  which  have  come  to  be  battle-flags  —  has 
enabled  me  to  preach  Divine  Sovereignty  to  Methodists, 
Orthodoxy  to  Unitarians,  the  Civil  Rights  of  the  Ne- 
groes to  Southerners,  Industrial  Democracy  to  capital- 
ists, and  the  leadership  of  Jesus  Christ  to  Jews.  How 
far  I  may  have  converted  them  to  my  way  of  thinking 
I  do  not  know;  but  I  have  at  least  got  a  respectful  hear- 
ing for  my  convictions. 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      163 

Whether  it  was  at  this  time  or  earlier  that  my  father 
gave  me  the  following  counsel  I  am  not  sure:  — 

Lyman  [he  said],  I  have  resolved  always  to  have  plenty  of 
money. 

Myself.   That's  easier  said  than  done,  father. 
Father.   Not  at  all.    It  is  perfectly  easily  done. 
Myself  (incredulously).   I  should  like  to  know  how. 
Father.   Always  spend  less  than  you  earn. 

And  I  remember  the  concrete  illustration  he  gave  to 
me:  "If  I  landed  at  the  Battery  from  Europe  with  ten 
cents  in  my  pocket,  I  would  walk  home  rather  than 
spend  six  cents  to  ride  uptown  in  an  omnibus." 

To  my  father's  counsel  I  have  added,  "Spend  your 
money  after  you  have  earned  it,  not  before." 

This  counsel  has  kept  me  from  dishonorable  debt,  al- 
though at  times  my  income  has  been  so  small  that  it  has 
been  necessary  to  forego  myself  and  to  deny  to  my 
family  all  luxuries  and  some  comforts.  There  was  one 
winter  when  my  wife,  with  two  little  children  to  care 
for,  was  her  own  cook,  housemaid,  and  nurse,  and,  on 
occasion,  dressmaker  and  milliner,  and  I  sawed  and 
split  all  the  wood  for  our  winter's  fuel,  though  I  kept 
up  the  sawing  only  till  I  had  paid  for  the  saw  and  the 
saw-horse.  At  such  times  this  resolve  to  incur  no  dis- 
honorable debt  has  spurred  me  on  to  add  to  my  regular 
income  by  extra  work  outside  my  profession.  Not  all 
debt  is  dishonorable.  But  all  debt  incurred  without 
assured  resources  with  which  to  repay  it  is  dishonorable, 
unless  the  creditor  knows  the  circumstances,  and,  for 
friendship's  sake  or  for  profit,  is  willing  to  take  the  risk. 

But  much  more  important  than  these  specific  counsels 
was  the  general  religious  influence  of  my  father,  who  was 
the  only  teacher  of  theology  under  whose  personal  in- 
fluence I  have  ever  come.  It  is  never  possible  for  a  teacher 


164  REMINISCENCES 

to  know  from  whom  he  has  derived  the  various  threads 
which  have  entered  into  and  compose  the  fabric  of  his 
teaching.  Nor  could  I  tell  now  what  or  how  much  I  re- 
ceived from  those  five  weeks  of  association  with  my 
father.  But  as  I  have  recently  reread  certain  of  his 
religious  writings,  I  have  been  anew  made  sensible  how 
much  of  my  theology  —  that  is,  of  my  philosophy  of 
religion  —  has  been  derived  from  him ;  I  hope  also  some- 
thing of  the  spirit  of  devotion  which  vitalized  all  his 
religious  thinking.  Faith  in  a  divine  Helper  and  Healer 
of  men,  and  the  desire  to  write,  not  to  demolish  one 
theological  system  or  to  construct  another,  but  to  help 
inquiring  and  doubtful  minds,  always  inspired  him;  and 
whatever  of  that  faith  and  that  purpose  has  inspired 
and  directed  my  work  was  inherited  from  him. 

My  father  was  not  a  Calvinist  —  certainly  not  in  the 
sense  in  which  John  Calvin  and  Jonathan  Edwards 
were  Calvinists.  But  I  imbibed  from  him  a  sympathy 
with  two  phases  of  Calvinism  —  its  reverence  for  divine 
sovereignty  and  its  interpretation  of  human  sinfulness. 
From  him  I  learned  to  hold  both  the  supremacy  of  law 
and  the  freedom  of  the  will  without  attempting  to  har- 
monize them.  "The  only  way  in  which  the  mind  can 
be  really  at  peace  on  this  subject,"  he  wrote  in  his  "  Com- 
mentary on  the  New  Testament,"  "is  humbly  to  ac- 
quiesce in  our  incapacity  to  fathom  this  gulf  in  theory, 
and  then  practically  to  yield  a  full  and  cordial  assent, 
on  the  one  hand,  to  the  dictates  of  conscience  which 
testify  that  we  are  entirely  unrestrained  in  our  moral 
conduct,  and  so  accountable  for  it,  and,  on  the  other, 
to  the  word  of  God,  asserting  that  Jehovah  is  supreme^ 
and  that  his  providence  includes  and  controls  all  that 
takes  place  under  his  reign."  On  this  subject,  and  on 
some  others,  my  father  was  an  agnostic  before  Huxley 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      165 

had  coined  the  word;  and  I  imbibed  this  measure  of 
agnosticism  from  him. 

Nor  was  he  less  explicit  in  recognizing  a  truth  in  the 
Calvinist's  view  of  sin.  Theodore  Parker,  in  a  letter 
written  about  1859-60,  said:  "I  find  sins,  i.e.,  conscious 
violations  of  natural  right,  but  no  sin,  i.e.,  no  conscious 
and  intentional  preference  of  wrong  (as  such)  to  right 
(as  such),  no  condition  of  enmity  against  God."  ^  I 
learned  from  my  father  that  sins  are  the  product  of  sin; 
that  as  virtue  is  something  more  than  conscious  per- 
formance of  virtuous  acts  because  they  are  virtuous,  so 
sin  is  something  more  than  conscious  performance  of 
wrong  acts  because  they  are  wrong. 

He  did  not  believe  with  the  Westminster  divine  that, 
as  a  result  of  Adam's  fall,  "we  are  utterly  indisposed, 
disabled,  and  made  opposite  to  all  good,  and  wholly 
inclined  to  all  evil."  In  what  seems  to  me  an  eloquent 
passage  he  describes  the  industry  which  characterizes 
the  average  American  village,  in  which  "each  man  labors 
thus  industriously,  day  after  day,  and  year  after  year, 
not  mainly  for  himself,  but  for  others";  the  affection 
which  unites  the  home,  binding  the  mother  "to  her  hus- 
band, her  children,  her  home,  and  to  all  the  domestic 
duties  which  devolve  upon  her";  the  spirit  of  self-denial 
which  leads  the  father  and  mother  to  devote  themselves 
by  day  and  night  to  the  care  of  a  sick  and  suffering  child. 
"There  is,"  he  says,  "a  great  moral  beauty  in  this,  and 
in  all  those  principles  of  human  nature  by  which  heart 
is  bound  to  heart,  and  communities  are  linked  together, 
in  bonds  of  peace  and  harmony,  and  of  mutual  coopera- 
tion and  good-will.  Some  persons  may  indeed  say  that 
there  is  nothing  of  a  moral  character  in  it.  We  will  not 
contend  for  a  word.   There  is  beauty  in  it  of  some  sort, 

^  John  Weir's  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Theodore  Parker,  vol.  i,  p,  151. 


166  REMINISCENCES 

it  is  certain;  for  he  who  can  look  upon  these  and  similar 
aspects  of  human  character  without  some  gratification 
is  not  human.  It  is  beauty  of  some  sort,  and  it  is  neither 
physical  nor  intellectual  beauty;  if  any  man  chooses  to 
apply  some  other  term  than  moral  to  characterize  it,  we 
will  not  contend.   At  any  rate,  it  is  human  nature." 

Thus  recognizing  the  moral  beauty  in  human  life,  he 
presents  in  a  passage  not  less  eloquent,  but  far  too  long 
to  quote  here,  an  indictment  of  mankind  for  their  re- 
fusal to  submit  to  the  law  of  God,  and  drew  a  sharp 
distinction  between  loyal  obedience  to  divine  law  and 
natural  affection,  to  which  and  to  policy  he  attributes 
nine  tenths  of  all  that  is  called  virtue  in  this  world.  I  do 
not  think  that  in  1859  he  would  have  drawn  this  dis- 
tinction quite  so  sharply;  he  would  perhaps  have  thought 
as  I  do,  that  much  of  what  is  called  natural  affection  is 
really  a  spontaneous  and  glad  obedience  to  God's  law 
of  love  written  in  the  heart.  However  this  may  be,  it  is 
certain  that  he  recognized  the  difference  between  sins 
>/  and  sin,  the  first  a  form  of  conduct,  the  second  a  quality 
of  character;  and  from  him,  in  part  at  least,  I  derived 
my  lifelong  conviction  on  this  subject.  The  conviction 
has  determined  my  teaching  alike  on  individual  and  on 
social  topics,  and  has  made  me  regard  all  mere  reform 
of  society  as  of  little  value,  except  as  it  promotes  or  is 
produced  by  a  new  life  of  justice  and  good- will  in  the 
community. 

The  remedy  for  this  condition  my  father  did  not 
think  could  ever  be  found  in  either  an  emotional  or  an 
intellectual  change.  We  are  not  to  postpone  doing  aright 
Y  until  we  can  be  persuaded  to  think  rightly  or  feel  rightly. 
The  remedy  for  sin  is  practical  obedience  to  divine  law. 
This  truth  he  illustrated  in  a  characteristic  parable.  A 
father  goes  away  from  home  leaving  his  boys  in  charge 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      167 

of  the  house  and  placing  certain  duties  and  responsibili- 
ties upon  them.  These  they  neglect.  A  friend  remon- 
strates with  them  and  urges  on  them  a  radical  change 
from  one  character  to  another. 

This  discourse  is  all  perfectly  true,  and  admirably  philo- 
sophical, but  it  is  sadly  impotent  in  regard  to  making  any  im- 
pression on  human  hearts.  Another  man  comes  to  address 
them  in  a  different  mode.  He  calls  upon  them  at  once  to 
return  to  their  duty. 

"What  shall  we  do  first?"  ask  the  boys. 

"Do  first?  Do  anything  first;  there  is  the  garden  to  be 
weeded,  and  the  library  to  be  arranged,  and  your  rooms  to  be 
put  in  order.  No  matter  what  you  do  first.  Begin  to  obey  your 
father.    That  is  the  point." 

This  twofold  doctrine  of  the  reality  of  sinfulness  and 
of  the  remedy  by  obedience  has  led  me  throughout 
my  ministry  to  deny  the  commonly  received  distinc- 
tion between  morality  and  religion,  to  urge  obedience 
to  the  moral  law,  never  as  a  substitute  for  religion,  but 
as  both  a  first  step  toward  it  and  an  evidence  of  it,  and 
to  welcome  the  present  religion  of  humanity  as  a  real 
and  permanent  advance  upon  the  religion  of  the  intel- 
lect and  the  religion  of  the  emotions. 

Still  more  important  in  its  effect  on  my  intellectual 
and  spiritual  development  was  my  father's  teaching 
concerning  the  nature  of  God  and  of  Jesus  Christ. 

God  [he  wrote]  is  everywhere.  .  .  .  The  Deity  is  the  All- 
pervading  Power  which  lives  and  acts  throughout  the  whole. 
He  is  not  a  separate  existence  having  a  special  habitation  in  a 
part  of  it.  .  .  .  God  is  a  Spirit.  .  .  .  That  is,  he  has  no 
form,  no  place,  no  throne.  Where  he  acts,  there  only  can  we 
see  him.  He  is  the  widespread  omnipresent  power,  which  is 
everywhere  employed  —  but  which  we  can  neither  see,  nor 
know,  except  so  far  as  he  shall  manifest  himself  by  his 
doings. 


168  REMINISCENCES 

"The  Corner-Stone,"  from  which  these  words  are 
quoted,  was  published  in  1834,  fifty  years  before  Her- 
bert Spencer's  declaration  that  "we  are  ever  in  the 
presence  of  an  infinite  and  eternal  energy  from  which 
all  things  proceed."  When  it  is  remembered  that  at  the 
time  of  its  publication  the  current  theology  in  practically 
all  churches,  Protestant  and  Roman  Catholic,  was  what 
has  been  well  called  "the  carpenter  theory  of  creation" 
—  that  God  at  a  definite  period  in  history  made  the 
world  and  launched  it  on  its  course  under  the  control  of 
certain  secondary  causes  which  he  also  created  and  set 
a-going  independently  of  him  —  it  will  not  be  thought 
strange  that  my  father  was  accused  of  pantheism.  Nor 
perhaps  will  it  be  thought  strange  that  my  father,  and 
I  who  had  imbibed  his  theology,  were  quite  ready  to 
welcome  the  doctrine  of  evolution  when  it  appeared. 
The  insuperable  obstacle  presented  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  held  to  the  older  and  mechanical  conception  of 
creation  was  no  obstacle  in  my  father's  mind  or  in  mine, 
though  it  took  some  years  for  me  to  acquaint  myself  with 
the  new  view  and  adjust  and  apply  it  to  the  moral  and 
spiritual  development  of  man. 

Nor  is  it  strange  that  my  father's  interpretation  of 
the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ  brought  down  upon  him 
equally  severe  criticism.  But  it  was  the  natural,  almost 
the  inevitable,  consequence  of  his  view  of  the  Deity  as 
a  Spirit  universally  present  but  invisible  and  made 
known  only  by  his  manifestations  of  himself  in  his  works. 

He  is  an  unseen,  universal  power,  utterly  invisible  to  us,  and 
imperceptible,  except  so  far  as  he  shall  act  out  his  attributes 
in  what  he  does.  How  shall  he  act  out  moral  principle?  It  is 
easy  by  his  material  creations  to  make  any  impression  upon 
us  which  material  objects  can  make;  but  how  shall  he  ex- 
hibit to  us  the  moral  beauty  of  justice,  and  benevolence,  and 
mercy  between  man  and  man  .J*    How  shall  he  exhibit  to  us 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      169 

clearly  his  desire  that  sorrow  and  suffering  on  earth  should  be  / 
mitigated,  and  injuries  forgiven,  and  universal  peace  and  good- 
will reign  among  the  members  of  this  great  family?  Can  he  do 
this  by  the  thunder,  the  lightning,  or  the  earthquake?  Can  he 
do  it  by  the  loveliness  of  the  evening  landscape,  or  the  mag- 
nificence and  splendor  of  the  countless  suns  and  stars?  No.  He 
might  declare  his  moral  attributes  as  he  might  have  declared 
his  power;  but  if  he  would  bring  home  to  us  the  one,  as  vividly 
and  distinctly  as  the  other,  he  must  act  out  his  moral  princi- 
ples by  a  moral  manifestation,  in  a  moral  scene;  and  the  great 
beauty  of  Christianity  is  that  it  represents  him  as  doing  so. 
He  brings  out  the  purity,  and  spotlessness,  and  moral  glory 
of  the  divinity  through  the  workings  of  a  human  mind,  called 
into  existence  for  this  purpose,  and  stationed  in  a  most  con- 
spicuous attitude  among  men.  .  .  .  Thus  the  moral  perfec- 
tions of  the  divinity  show  themselves  to  us  in  the  only  way  by 
which,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  it  is  possible  directly  to  show  them, 
by  coming  out  in  action,  in  the  very  field  of  human  duty, 
through  a  mysterious  union  with  a  human  intellect  and  human 
powers.  It  is  God  manifest  in  the  flesh;  the  visible  moral 
image  of  an  all-pervading  moral  Deity,  himself  forever  in- 
visible. 

This  was  very  different  from  the  then  current  view  of 
the  Trinity  —  three  independent  and  individual  Per- 
sons mysteriously  joined  together  in  one  Person;  and 
equally  inconsistent  with  Mr.  Beecher's  view  as  ex- 
pressed by  him  in  an  article  pointing  out  the  radical 
difference  between  his  theology  and  that  of  Theodore 
Parker :  — 

Could  Theodore  Parker  worship  my  God?  Christ  Jesus  is 
his  name.  All  that  there  is  of  God  to  me  is  bound  up  in  that 
name.  A  dim  and  shadowy  eflluence  rises  from  Christ,  and 
that  I  am  taught  to  call  the  Father.  A  yet  more  tenuous  and 
invisible  film  of  thought  arises,  and  that  is  the  Holy  Spirit. 
But  neither  are  to  me  aught  tangible,  restful,  accessible.  They 
are  to  be  revealed  to  my  knowledge  hereafter,  but  now  only  to 
my  faith.  But  Christ  stands  my  manifest  God.  All  that  I 
know  is  of  him  and  in  him. 


170  REMINISCENCES 

Those  who  are  famiHar  with  my  writings  will  recog- 
nize that  it  was  from  the  teachings  of  my  father  that  I 
evolved  my  own  conception  of  Jesus  Christ  as,  not  God 
and  man  mysteriously  joined  together  in  a  being  who 
represents  neither  what  God  is  nor  what  man  can  be- 
come, but  God  in  man,  the  supreme  revelation  in  his- 
tory of  what  God  is,  what  man  can  be,  and  what  is  the 
true  and  normal  relation  between  the  two. 

One  more  reference  to  my  father's  theology  must 
bring  this  perhaps  too  prolonged  account  of  my  theo- 
logical professor  to  an  end.  He  was  wholly  indifferent 
to  forms,  whether  of  doctrine  or  of  worship.  He  was, 
therefore,  not  a  denominationalist.  He  remained  in  the 
Congregational  Church  to  the  day  of  his  death;  but  he 
would  probably  have  remained  equally  contented  in 
any  church  in  which  he  had  happened  to  be  brought  up. 
But  he  did  not  believe  in  church  union.  If  he  had  lived 
till  to-day,  and  his  faith  had  remained  unchanged,  he 
would  have  given  his  hearty  support  to  the  attempted 
federation  of  the  churches,  but  he  would  not  have  given 
support,  and  perhaps  would  have  actively  opposed,  the 
proposal  to  unite  all  churches  in  one  church. 

Nine  tenths  of  nominal  Christians  all  over  the  world  [he 
wrote]  are  firmly  believing,  and  sincerely  wishing,  that  their 
own  denomination  may  extend  and  swallow  up  the  rest,  and 
become  universal.  .  .  .  There  can  be  no  moral  effect  more 
certain  than  that,  in  such  a  case,  four  or  five  generations  would 
place  worldly,  selfish,  ambitious  men  at  the  head  of  the  reli- 
gious interests  of  the  world! 

When,  in  1876,  I  was  invited  to  become  associated 
with  Mr.  Beecher  in  the  editorship  of  the  "Christian 
Union,"  I  was  prepared  to  welcome  the  invitation,  be- 
cause I  had  learned  from  my  father  to  desire  the  coopera- 
tion of  all  Christians  in  a  common  work  for  the  better- 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      171 

ment  of  the  world,  but  not  in  a  common  ecclesiastical 
organization. 

My  father's  discarding  of  forms  and  his  non-combat- 
ive and  persuasive  temper  were  both  illustrated  by  one 
incident  in  his  life,  for  that  reason  worth  narrating  here. 
In  "The  Corner-Stone"  he  had  one  chapter  upon  the 
Last  Supper.  Nearly  the  whole  of  this  chapter  was  de- 
voted to  an  interpretation  of  and  comment  upon  Christ's 
instructions  as  reported  in  the  Gospel  of  John.  The  in- 
stitution of  the  Supper  my  father  described  as  follows:  — 

At  the  close  of  the  interview  he  established  the  great  Chris- 
tian ordinance,  which  has  been  celebrated,  without  interrup- 
tion, from  that  day  to  this.  The  circumstances  under  which 
that  ordinance  was  established  teach  us  a  lesson,  as  we  have 
already  briefly  said  in  a  preceding  chapter,  in  regard  to  the 
manner  in  which  the  Saviour  regarded  forms  and  ceremonies, 
which  it  is  strange  that  Christians  have  been  so  slow  to  learn. 
In  the  first  place,  he  made  apparently  no  preparation  for  it. 
The  articles  used  were  those  which  we  may  literally  say  hap- 
pened  to  be  there.  .  .  .  He  does  not  look  around  and  choose 
some  act  or  arrange  some  ceremony  with  care,  adapting  it  to 
its  purpose  and  prescribing  nicely  its  forms.  No,  he  selects 
a  portion  of  the  very  transaction  which  was  before  him,  and 
consecrates  that.  He  just  takes  the  bread  which  was  upon  the 
table,  and  pours  out  another  cup  of  wine,  and  says,  "Take 
these,  as  emblems  of  my  sufferings  and  death,  incurred  for  the 
remission  of  your  sins,  and  henceforth  do  this  in  remembrance 
of  me;  as  often  as  you  do  it  you  will  represent  the  Lord's 
death,  until  he  come."  Had  he  been  walking  in  a  grove,  in- 
stead of  being  seated  at  a  table,  when  his  last  hour  with  his 
disciples  had  arrived,  he^^ould  perhaps,  on  the  same  principles, 
have  broken  off  a  branch  from  a  tree  and  distributed  a  por- 
tion to  his  friends,  and  then  Christians  would  have  afterwards 
commemorated  his  death  by  wearing  their  monthly  badge 
of  evergreen;  or,  if  he  had  been  returning  to  Jerusalem, 
he  would  perhaps  have  consecrated  their  walk,  and  then, 
during  all  succeeding  ages,  the  sacred  ceremony  would 
have  been  performed  by  a  solemn  procession  of  his  friends. 


172  REMINISCENCES 

No  matter  what  the  act  was  which  was  thus  set  apart  as 
a  memorial.  The  feeling  of  which  it  is  the  symbol  is  all 
that  is  important. 

Congregationalists  have  generally  regarded  the  Sup- 
per as  Zwingle  did,  as  merely  a  memorial;  but  even  to 
Congregationalists  this  dismissal  of  its  ecclesiastical 
character  gave  offense.  When  my  father,  about  six 
months  later,  came  before  a  Congregational  Council 
for  ordination,  one  clergyman  objected  to  this  passage 
as  heretical.  My  father  accepted  the  criticism,  and  said 
that  in  future  editions  he  would  modify  the  paragraph; 
and  he  subsequently  did  so  by  omitting  altogether  the 
illustrations  of  the  branch  and  the  procession.  But  I 
have  no  reason  to  think,  either  from  the  alteration  made 
or  from  his  subsequent  writings,  that  he  ever  modified 
his  essential  view  of  the  communion  as  a  simple  memo- 
rial service,  with  no  special  sacrificial  significance  —  a 
service  of  real  value  in  the  Christian  Church,  but  not 
essential  to  the  Christian  life  or  character. 

The  reader  is  not  to  think  that  I  entered  on  my  min- 
istry fully  equipped  with  my  father's  theology.  It  was 
the  product  of  his  experience.  He  could  no  more  im- 
part to  me  his  theology  than  he  could  impart  to  me  his 
experience.  I  do  not  think  he  even  tried.  There  was 
no  attempt  at  formal  instruction.  We  talked  together 
while  we  worked  together  on  the  grounds  or  sat  before 
the  open  wood  fire  in  his  room,  and  he  answered  my 
eager  questionings.  How  much  of  the  theology  which 
I  have  outlined  here  he  gave  me  then  I  cannot  say.  I 
only  know  that  he  put  into  my  mind  the  clues  which  I 
subsequently  followed,  and  which  led  me  by  a  gradual 
process  to  accept  his  philosophy  of  life,  because  they 
inspired  me  with  the  aspiration  to  make  his  life  and 
character  my  own. 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      173 

On  the  13th  of  October  my  father  left  Fewacres, 
whether  for  New  York  City  or  for  Europe  I  do  not  now 
recall.  My  wife  and  I  took  possession  of  his  rooms  and 
I  began  my  winter's  course  of  study.  I  had  marked  it 
out  for  myself  before  leaving  Brooklyn,  after  consulta- 
tion with  Mr.  Beecher,  Dr.  Kirk,  of  Boston,  and  Dr. 
Calvin  E.  Stowe,  of  Andover  Theological  Seminary. 
Even  before  finally  deciding  to  enter  on  the  ministry  I 
had  written  to  my  father-in-law  describing  what  I 
thought  was  the  true  work  of  the  minister  and  what 
should  be  the  chief  subjects  of  his  study:  his  work, 
"the  application  of  the  principles  of  the  Bible  to  human 
life  and  human  experience";  his  chief  subjects  of  study, 
therefore,  the  Bible  and  human  nature. 

Dr.  Kirk  had  told  me  that  "students  don't  have  time 
to  study  the  Bible  in  the  theological  seminary,"  but  he 
"would  make  it  the  main  thing."  This  seemed  to  me 
then,  and  seems  to  me  now,  a  very  serious  indictment 
of  the  theological  seminary.  Perhaps  he  was  mistaken; 
perhaps  the  seminaries  have  reformed  since;  perhaps 
they  assume  that  theological  students  have  a  general 
acquaintance  with  the  English  Bible  before  they  enter 
the  seminary,  as  colleges  are  said  to  assume  that  students 
know  how  to  use  the  English  language  before  they  enter 
college,  though  neither  is  justified  by  the  facts.  At  all 
events,  I  agreed  with  Dr.  Kirk  that  a  knowledge  of  the 
Bible  was  the  main  thing,  and  I  was  quite  sure  that  I 
had  no  such  knowledge  of  it  as  I  desired  to  have.  Mr. 
Beecher,  Dr.  Kirk,  and  Professor  Stowe  all  agreed  in 
advising  me  that  Alford's  Greek  Testament  was  the  best 
existing  commentary  on  the  New  Testament.  I  used 
nearly  all  the  little  money  I  had  for  books  in  buying 
this  commentary,  Robinson's  Lexicon  of  New  Testament 
Greek,  and  Robinson's  "Harmony  of  the  Gospels."    In 


174  REMINISCENCES 

outlining  my  plans  for  study  to  my  father-in-law,  I  wrote 
him  that  I  proposed  "to  read  Alford's  Greek  Testament, 
the  newest,  best  commentary,  in  the  original  Greek, 
carefully  looking  out  the  references,  writing  my  own 
notes  suggested  by  the  study,  and  getting  such  informa- 
tion concerning  manners  and  customs,  history  and  bibli- 
ography, as  I  can  from  books  within  my  reach."  As  to 
the  Old  Testament,  "my  present  plan  is  not  to  study 
Hebrew,  but  to  read  through  Townsend's  Chronological 
Arrangement  of  the  Old  Testament,  with  Josephus, 
and  perhaps  some  assistance  from  some  commentaries." 
As  incidental  aids  to  this  Bible  study  I  proposed  to  read 
Robinson's  "Biblical  Researches  in  Palestine,  Sinai, 
and  Arabia"  for  geography,  and  Conybeare  and  How- 
son's  "Life  and  Letters  of  Paul"  for  manners  and  cus- 
toms. For  theology  I  proposed  to  reread  Sir  William 
Hamilton's  lectures  on  metaphysics,  which  I  had  studied 
in  college,  Mansel's  "Limits  of  Religious  Thought," 
and  Combe's  "Phrenology."  To  the  last  book  I  was 
attracted  by  Mr.  Beecher's  constant  references  to  phren- 
ology in  his  preaching.  Other  books  I  included  in  my 
plan  of  study,  but  rather  as  incidents  than  as  essentials, 
such  as  Dwight's  "Theology,"  Knapp's  "Theology," 
Paley,  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  others.  When  I  reached 
Farmington,  I  found  in  my  Aunt  Clara's  library,  de- 
rived from  her  husband,  Calvin's  "Institutes."  As  I 
have  always  been  inclined  to  go  to  original  sources  as 
far  as  I  could  do  so,  I  discarded  Knapp  and  Dwight, 
and  in  their  place  read,  with  care,  Calvin. 

Of  course  certain  of  these  books  belonged  to  that 
epoch,  as  is  the  case  with  Mansel;  and  others  have  been 
supplanted  by  modern  scholarship,  as  is  the  case  with 
Townsend's  Bible,  which  had  come  to  me  from  my  grand- 
father's library,  and  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  the  first  serious 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      175 

attempt  to  treat  the  Bible  as  a  collection  of  Hebrew 
literature.  But,  considering  my  slender  resources,  the 
course  was  wisely  laid  out.  The  study  of  Alford,  Cony- 
beare  and  Howson,  and  Townsend  laid  the  foundation 
for  subsequent  studies  pursued  with  more  adequate 
equipment,  and  for  subsequent  work  both  by  the  voice 
in  the  pulpit  and  by  the  pen  in  literary  labors.  The  ac- 
companying study  of  Sir  William  Hamilton  prepared  me 
to  frame  my  own  theology  and  to  modify  it  with  advanc- 
ing years  and  enlarging  experiences.  Every  minister 
should  have  a  theology.  But  it  is  best  for  him  to  make 
it  for  himself.  For  theology  should  always  be  the  in- 
tellectual expression  of  a  spiritual  experience.  If  the 
student  cannot  make  one  for  himself,  but  must  accept 
it  ready  made,  he  must  at  least  vitalize  it  with  his  spirit- 
ual experience;  otherwise  it  will  prove  not  an  equipment 
but  a  handicap.  Modern  psychology  has  disregarded 
phrenology.  But  I  still  think  the  phrenology  of  Combe, 
Spurzheim,  and  Gall  affords  the  most  convenient  classi- 
fication of  mental  and  emotional  phenomena  for  prac- 
tical use  by  the  religious  teacher. 

There  remains  one  important  branch  of  a  minister's 
education  —  homiletics,  or  the  art  of  preaching.  For 
this  I  had  made  no  other  preparation  than  a  vague 
plan  to  write  some  sermons,  which  I  proposed,  with  the 
audacity  of  youth,  to  ask  Dr.  Kirk  to  criticise  for  me. 
This  plan  was  never  carried  out,  for  homiletics  was 
taught  me  by  a  somewhat  unique  method. 

I  had  been  pursuing  my  studies  for  perhaps  three  or 
four  weeks  when  one  day  two  men  from  the  village  of 
Wilton,  nine  miles  distant,  called  to  see  me.  A  new  Con- 
gregational church  had  just  been  erected.  The  congrega- 
tion had  scarcely  moved  in  before  their  pastor  suddenly 
sickened  and  died.    They  wished  to  continue  his  salary 


176  '  REMINISCENCES 

to  his  widow  until  the  1st  of  January.  This  they  could 
do  only  in  case  they  could  arrange  for  the  supply  of  the 
pulpit  without  expense.  Neighboring  pastors  had  agreed 
to  supply  it  so  far  as  they  could  do  so  without  injustice 
to  their  own  parishes,  but  this  would  still  leave  several 
Sundays  unsupplied.  After  January  1  the  church 
could  not  expect  to  get  candidates  to  come,  in  the  dead 
of  a  Maine  winter,  to  preach  in  what  was  not  a  specially 
desirable  parish.  Would  I  contribute  my  services  for 
the  unprovided  Sundays  before  January  1  and  preach 
for  such  compensation  as  they  could  give  (how  much  it 
was  I  do  not  recall)  after  January  1  ? 

It  is  often  said  that  one  can  always  find  reasons  for 
doing  what  one  wishes  to  do.  It  is  equally  true  that 
reasons  flock  to  one  unsought  for  not  doing  what  one 
wants  very  much  to  do.  Of  course  I  wanted  very  much 
to  accept  this  invitation.  For  the  privilege  of  preaching 
I  had  given  up  all  that  I  had  gained  in  six  years'  study 
and  practice  of  law.  I  was  eager  to  begin  my  ministry. 
Therefore  I  saw  half  a  score  of  reasons  why  I  could  not. 
But  the  delegation  which  had  called  on  me  was  insistent. 
Without  my  cooperation  they  could  not  pay  the  pastor's 
widow  her  greatly  needed  pension;  and  they  would  have 
to  close  their  new  church  through  the  winter  just  when 
they  were  looking  forward  with  such  anticipation  to  a 
successful  winter's  campaign.  I  finally  agreed  to  con- 
sult my  Uncle  John.  My  Uncle  John  was  an  enthusiast. 
Do  it?  Of  course  I  could  do  it.  Not  prepared  to  preach.'' 
The  way  to  learn  to  preach  was  to  preach.  No  time  to 
write  sermons .f'  No  need  to  write  sermons;  preach  with- 
out writing.  Interfere  with  my  studies.''  The  fact  that 
I  had  to  preach  on  Sunday  would  give  point  to  my 
studies.  Irregular?  Father  Hackett  at  Temple,  seven 
or  eight  miles  away,  was  the  oldest  preacher  in  that 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      177 

region.  Drive  over  there  and  ask  him  if  it  was  irregular. 
I  did  so.  Father  Hackett  welcomed  me  as  the  son  of  my 
father,  the  grandson  of  my  grandfather,  and  the  hus- 
band of  a  wife  whose  maternal  grandfather,  Benjamin 
Abbot,  had  been  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  honored 
members  of  his  parish.  He  invited  me  to  preach  for 
him  the  next  Sunday,  which  I  did;  and  he  arranged  for 
an  early  meeting  of  the  local  Congregational  associa- 
tion, at  which  I  was  examined  and  by  which  I  was  duly 
licensed.  My  objections  all  met,  I  informed  the  Wilton 
church  that  I  could  spend  no  time  in  preparing  sermons, 
but  I  would  make  the  attempt  to  preach  for  them,  and 
the  experiment  could  last  as  long  as  they  were  satisfied, 
and  stop  when  they  were  not.  My  experience  justified 
my  expectation  previously  expressed  to  my  father-in- 
law,  that  he  who  studied  life  would  find  themes  for  his 
pulpit.  On  November  24,  after  I  had  been  preaching 
about  six  weeks,  I  wrote  to  him,  "Sermons  occur  to  me 
oftener  than  I  have  occasion  to  preach  them";  and  this, 
except  for  occasional  brief  periods  of  physical  fatigue, 
has  been  true  in  my  experience  throughout  my  life. 

Before  leaving  Brooklyn  I  had  written  to  my  father- 
in-law  that  "I  do  not  mean  to  spend  my  study  hours, 
when  I  get  to  work  in  the  church,  in  specific  preparation 
for  special  sermons  if  I  can  avoid  it,  but  in  general  study, 
preaching  from  a  constantly  accumulating  fund  of 
knowledge  and  study,  and  studying  for  my  sermons 
much  more  among  men  than  among  books."  This  in- 
vitation from  Wilton  gave  me  an  opportunity  to  put 
this  theory  to  the  test.  In  truth,  I  had  no  option.  I 
must  either  abandon  my  general  preparation  for  the 
ministry  or  I  must  do  my  preaching  "from  a  constantly 
accumulating  fund  of  knowledge."  I  carried  on  my 
general  studies  in  the  Bible  and  in  theology,  especially 


178  REMINISCENCES 

the  former,  without  interruption  through  the  week.  I 
do  not  remember  that  I  ever  touched  pen  to  paper  in 
preparation  for  the  next  Sunday's  sermon,  though  I 
tried  to  get  my  theme  in  mind  early  in  the  week  and  let 
it  lie  there  accumulating  thoughts  and  illustrations  in 
leisure  hours.  On  Saturday  afternoon  I  drove  over  to 
Wilton,  an  hour  and  a  half  or  two  hours'  drive,  and  this 
was  my  time  for  putting  my  to-morrow's  two  sermons 
into  shape.  In  Wilton  I  "boarded  round,"  my  host  for 
each  Sunday  giving  me  the  invitation  the  preceding 
Sunday.  Sunday  morning  I  asked  for  a  warm  room 
where  I  might  be  by  myself  to  prepare  for  the  service. 
I  generally  began  by  writing  somewhat  fully  the  first 
part  of  my  morning  sermon  with  full  notes  for  the  latter 
part,  and  I  followed  the  example  of  the  old  New  Eng- 
land divines,  by  making  my  afternoon  sermon  one  of 
practical  application  of  the  doctrine  of  the  morning  ser- 
mon. After  service  I  drove  back  to  Farmington,  and 
was  ready  Monday  morning  to  go  on  with  my  general 
studies. 

Speaking  in  large  measure  extemporaneously,  I 
watched  my  congregation,  as  in  the  law  I  had  watched 
the  judge  and  the  jury,  to  see  whether  or  not  I  was  get- 
ting their  attention  and  carrying  their  minds  with  me. 
The  true  extemporaneous  speaker  does  not  talk  to  his 
congregation;  he  talks  with  them,  and  receives  as  well 
as  gives.  This  habit,  which  has  stayed  with  me  through 
life,  was  intensified  by  an  incident  which  gave  me  at 
the  time  something  of  a  jar.  My  host  on  one  Sunday 
was  the  village  lawyer,  who  was  not  a  great  church- 
goer and  had  the  reputation  of  rather  liking  to  poke  fun 
at  the  minister.  I  was  therefore  agreeably  surprised 
when  he  said  to  me  at  dinner,  "Mr.  Abbott,  you  pro- 
duced a  very  profound  impression  by  your  sermon  this 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      179 

morning."  Embarrassed  as  well  as  pleased  by  the  un- 
expected compliment  from  so  distinguished  a  member 
of  my  congregation,  I  mumbled  such  acknowledgment 
as  I  could,  and  he  continued:  "Yes;  I  do  not  think  I 
have  ever  seen  so  great  an  impression  produced  in  that 

church.    You  kept  Squire  awake  as  much  as 

fifteen  minutes."    After  that  Squire  became  a 

kind  of  thermometer  to  me.  I  kept  my  eye  upon  him 
and  measured  the  influence  of  my  eloquence  by  his 
wakefulness.  I  do  not  think  I  ever  kept  him  awake 
through  the  whole  sermon.  To  keep  him  awake  and  at- 
tending for  fifteen  minutes  was  a  victory. 

I  may  say  in  passing  that  the  method  of  preparation 
for  the  pulpit  formed  in  me  by  this  winter's  experience 
in  Wilton  I  have  followed  ever  since.  I  have  through- 
out my  life  spent  my  week  in  general  courses  of  study, 
and  preached  my  sermon  and  written  my  article  out  of 
a  reservoir  which  these  courses  of  study  kept  full.  I 
have  been  more  solicitous  to  have  something  worth 
saying  than  to  say  it  in  the  best  form.  Doubtless  had  I 
expended  more  time  and  thought  on  the  sermon  it 
would  have  been  better  literature  and  perhaps  better 
worth  printing,  but  I  doubt  if  it  would  have  been  a 
better  message.  I  am  never  complimented  as  an  "elo- 
quent orator,"  but  I  am  often  thanked  for  "the  talk  you 
gave  us  this  morning";  and  the  thanks  are  worth  more 
than  the  compliment.  The  reason  why  churches  want 
young  men  for  their  pulpits  is  not  because  they  are 
enamored  of  youth.  It  is  because  they  want  fresh  truth, 
freshly  conceived  and  freshly  put  by  the  preacher.  He 
who  spends  all  his  time  in  writing  sermons  and  leaves  no 
time  for  general  study  soon  grows  stale  in  thought. 

Before  the  spring  opened  I  had  grown  eager  to  get 
to  my  regular  work.    I  wanted  to  be  something  more 


180  REMINISCENCES 

than  a  mere  preacher.  I  wanted  a  congregation  which 
I  could  study  and  a  parish  in  which  I  could  do  personal 
work.  I  wanted  to  be,  not  a  lecturer,  but  a  pastor,  a 
counselor,  a  friend.  I  was  invited  to  make  Wilton  my 
parish.  In  a  letter  to  my  father-in-law  I  put  the  pros 
and  cons.  I  was  attached  to  the  people;  my  father's  and 
grandfather's  reputation  added  to  my  influence;  the 
parish  was  small,  and  I  wanted  a  small  parish  in  order 
to  go  on  with  my  studies.  But  neither  the  village  nor 
the  county  was  growing  in  population;  the  young  and 
enterprising  men  went  West  or  to  the  large  towns,  and 
the  young  women  married  and  did  the  same.  I  should 
like  to  be  a  little  more  within  the  reach  of  the  world's 
tide  waters  and,  on  my  wife's  account,  nearer  her 
friends.  And  I  felt  that  there  was  a  better  opportunity 
for  useful  work  in  a  growing  community  of  young 
people  than  any  inland  village  of  Maine  could  afford.  In 
addition,  I  feared  the  effect  of  the  Maine  climate  on  my 
wife's  health,  both  of  whose  parents  had  suffered  from 
lung  disease.  On  February  7  I  was  summoned  to  New 
York  to  give  some  needed  testimony,  I  presume,  in 
a  legal  matter  in  which  I  had  been  engaged  when  as- 
sociated with  my  brothers  in  the  law.  I  resolved  to 
seize  that  opportunity  to  look  for  a  parish.  If  I  found 
none,  I  would  return  to  Wilton. 

One  incident  in  connection  with  this  visit  to  New 
York  exercised  a  real,  though  indeterminate,  influence 
upon  my  character.  On  February  27  Abraham  Lin- 
coln made  his  famous  Cooper  Union  speech.  It  was  his 
first  speech  in  the  Eastern  campaign  which  had  been 
arranged  for  him  by  his  friends.  I  succeeded  in  getting 
a  ticket  and  hearing  the  address.  It  was  the  only  time 
I  ever  saw  Mr.  Lincoln.  My  recollection  of  the  scene  is 
little  more  than  a  memory  of  a  memory:  the  long  hall 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      181 

with  the  platform  at  the  end,  not  at  the  side,  as  now; 
the  great,  expectant,  but  not  enthusiastic  crowd;  the 
tall,  ungainly  figure,  the  melancholy  face,  the  clear  car- 
rying voice,  the  few,  awkward  gestures.  Reading  over 
that  speech  now,  I  can  discern  in  it  elements  of  power 
which  I  was  in  no  critical  mood  to  discern  then:  its 
Anglo-Saxon  words,  its  simple  sentence  structure,  its 
intellectual  and  moral  unity,  its  steady  and  irresistible 
progress  from  premise  to  conclusion.  But  even  then  it 
seemed  to  me  the  most  compelling  utterance  I  had  ever 
heard.  I  had  been  many  times  more  thrilled  by  Mr. 
Beecher.  But  the  impulses  which  Mr.  Beecher's  more 
fervent  oratory  had  created  in  me  Mr.  Lincoln's  un- 
oratorical  address  welded  into  an  invincible  resolve. 
Conscience  makes  cowards.  New  York  was  afraid.  The 
spirit  of  Abraham  Lincoln's  address  was  embodied  in 
its  closing  sentence:  "Let  us  have  faith  that  right  makes 
might,  and  in  that  faith  let  us  dare  to  the  end  to  do  our 
duty  as  we  understand  it."  That  faith  I  had  inherited 
from  my  father,  and  my  pastor  had  kindled  it  into  a 
passion.  What  that  single  speech  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
did  to  give  to  that  faith  steadfastness  of  courage  I  did  not 
know  then  and  cannot  adequately  estimate  now.  I  only 
know  that  it  stood  me  in  good  stead  in  after  trying  days. 
Possibly  the  ingenuity  of  man  could  devise  a  worse 
method  for  the  churches  to  adopt  in  securing  a  pastor 
than  the  one  adopted  by  the  Congregationalists,  and 
largely  also  by  other  Protestant  denominations;  but 
my  imagination  is  not  equal  to  conceiving  a  method 
that  would  be  worse.  When  the  young  man  is  ready  for 
a  parish,  he  secures  as  best  he  can  a  list  of  vacant 
parishes  in  the  general  region  in  which  he  would  like  to 
settle.  He  gets  the  year-book  of  his  denomination  and 
looks  up  the  records  to  find  the  statistics  of  these  churches: 


182  REMINISCENCES 

How  large  is  the  congregation?  how  large  the  Sunday- 
School?  how  much  the  benevolences  contributed?  what 
salary  is  paid?  When  he  has  picked  out  a  church,  or 
two  or  three  churches,  which  suit  him,  he  writes  to  them, 
or  gets  some  friend  to  write  for  him,  to  obtain  an  in- 
vitation to  preach  for  them  some  Sunday  as  a  candi- 
date. That  is,  he  asks  a  chance  to  preach,  not  to  con- 
vert sinners  or  edify  saints,  but  to  let  the  sinners  and 
the  saints  see  how  he  can  preach.  "The  candidate," 
said  my  Uncle  John  to  me,  "goes  into  the  pulpit  and 
says,  'I  have  come  to  show  you  what  I  can  do.  I  will 
show  you  how  well  I  can  read  Scripture.  I  will  read  the 
fifth  chapter  of  Matthew.  I  will  show  you  how  well  I 
can  preach.  My  text  is  the  seventeenth  verse.  I  will 
show  you  how  well  I  can  pray.   Let  us  pray.'" 

There  was  nothing  in  my  adventures  in  search  of  a 
parish  either  more  or  less  humiliating  than  in  the  anal- 
ogous experience  of  all  candidates.  But  it  was  intoler- 
ably humiliating  to  me.  It  was  in  vain  that  my  wise 
wife  urged  me  to  be  patient.  I  was  not  patient,  and  I 
am  afraid  I  did  not  even  wish  to  be.  It  was  my  first  and 
last  experience  of  candidating.  I  wrote  to  churches;  I 
asked  friends  to  write  for  me  to  churches;  I  got  letters 
of  introduction  to  forward  to  churches;  I  looked  up 
churches  in  the  year-book  and  towns  in  the  gazetteer; 
I  interviewed  friends  who  might  know  of  churches  or 
know  some  one  who  did;  and  I  preached  in  successive 
churches  to  show  the  congregations  what  I  could  do.  I 
resolved  then  that  I  would  never  go  through  that  ex- 
perience again,  and  I  never  did.  When,  in  1869,  I  left 
my  parish  in  New  York  City  and  retired  to  Cornwall-on- 
the-Hudson  for  a  three  months'  vacation,  it  was  with 
the  resolve  that  if  I  must  be  a  candidate  in  order  to 
preach  again  I  would  never  preach.   In  fact,  rather  than 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      183 

pass  again  through  the  humiliating  experience  of  a 
candidate  in  search  of  a  parish,  I  remained  for  seventeen 
years  out  of  true  parish  work,  though  not  out  of  pulpit 
work,  devoting  myself  to  a  ministry  through  the  pen, 
the  pulpit  supply  of  a  small  church  in  the  immediate 
vicinity,  and  occasional  preaching  away  from  home. 
My  candidating  tour  in  1860  was  brought  suddenly  to 
a  close  by  an  invitation  which  came  to  me  unsought. 
It  came  to  me  in  this  way:  — 

I  was  in  New  York  City.  A  friend  told  me  that  Mr. 
Henry  C.  Bowen,  the  proprietor  of  the  New  York  "In- 
dependent," wanted  to  see  me.  I  called  to  see  him,  and 
he  handed  me  a  letter  from  a  merchant  of  Terre  Haute, 
Indiana.  "Answer  that,"  he  said.  He  was  a  man  of 
few  words,  and  said  not  much  more.  I  have  not  the 
letter.  I  probably  returned  it  to  him.  But  as  I  now 
recall  it,  it  was  to  this  effect:  "You  have  supplied  our 
house  with  dry-goods  for  many  years  very  satisfac- 
torily. Now  we  want  to  know  if  you  cannot  supply  our 
church  with  a  minister.  Our  preacher,  Dr.  Jewett,  has 
been  here  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  He  has  taken  a 
year's  leave  of  absence.  It  is  doubtful  whether  he  ever 
returns.  He  may.  We  want  a  supply  for  our  pulpit 
for  the  year;  a  permanent  pastorate  may  perhaps  grow 
out  of  it.  Dr.  Jewett  is  one  of  the  most  popular  preachers 
in  the  State;  his  successor  should  be  a  good  preacher;  he 
should  have  had  some  experience;  should  have  had  a 
good  theological  education.  A  man  without  family 
would  be  preferred,  as  the  post  may  not  be  permanent." 
I  wrote  at  once  for  information,  and  gave  such  informa- 
tion as  I  could;  as  that  I  had  had  no  experience,  that  I 
had  never  been  in  a  theological  seminary,  and  that  I 
had  a  wife  and  child.  Perhaps  the  frankness  of  my  re- 
ply, perhaps  some  word  from  Mr.  Bowen,  served  to  sat- 


184  REMINISCENCES 

isfy  the  committee.  I  received  almost  immediately  the 
following  response.  The  writer  was  then  an  entire 
stranger  to  me.  He  and  his  wife  became  afterward  to 
us  the  warmest  and  most  loved  of  friends:  — 

Dear  Sir*  Terre  Haute,  March  2,  1860. 

Your  favor  of  the  27  ult.  was  received  yesterday.  Also  one 
from  H.  C.  Bowen,  Esq.  Both  letters  are  very  satisfactory. 
The  Trustees  had  a  consultation  this  morning  and  decided  to 
make  you  the  following  proposition.  We  will  employ  you  for 
one  year  at  a  salary  of  one  thousand  dollars,  provided  the 
arrangement  should  prove  satisfactory  to  both  parties.  By 
this  I  mean  that  if  on  trial  you  should  not  be  satisfied  to 
remain,  or  we  for  any  reason  should  be  dissatisfied  with  you, 
the  engagement  may  be  terminated,  but  in  a  way  satisfactory 
and  just  to  both  parties.  From  this  I  would  not  have  you  infer 
that  we  feel  any  apprehension;  on  the  contrary,  from  your 
letters  everything  seems  as  promising  as  we  could  wish.  As 
to  the  probability  of  your  being  permanently  settled  I  can 
say  that,  in  case  of  mutual  satisfaction,  there  is  a  strong  prob- 
ability that  you  might  be,  nay  almost  a  certainty.  In  case  of 
your  settlement  we  might  offer  you  a  salary  of  from  $1,200  to 
$1,500.  We  have  paid  our  pastor  for  the  last  ten  years  from 
$800  to  $1,500  per  annum,  which  is  as  much  as  any  minister 
in  the  place  has  been  paid,  and  one  third  more  than  two-thirds 
of  them  have  received. 

We  have  no  parsonage.  Dwellings  for  rent  are  scarce  now, 
but  we  think  a  good  and  convenient  one  may  be  had  after  a 
while  for  about  $200.  We  have  good  hotels  and  some  good 
private  boarding-houses.  There  is  but  the  one  Congregational 
church  in  the  place.  We  have  the  best  church  edifice,  and  the 
largest  congregation  (except  the  Methodist)  in  the  place.  Our 
church  and  congregation  embraces  many  of  the  most  promi- 
nent business  men  here.  On  the  whole  we  regard  it  as  a  very 
promising  field  for  usefulness.  I  know  of  no  place  where  the 
right  man  would  be  likely  to  accomplish  more  good. 

I  went  back  to  Farmington  and  told  my  wife  that  we 
had  been  praying  to  God  to  open  a  door  for  us;  he  had 


FEWACRES  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY      185 

opened  two  —  one  in  Wilton  and  one  in  Terre  Haute; 
I  was  not  inclined  to  shut  both  doors  in  his  face  and  ask 
him  to  open  another. 

My  wife  was  not  inclined  to  either  parish;  but  when  I 
put  the  alternative  before  her,  her  reply  was  that  when  I 
decided  where  I,was  going  she  should  certainly  go  with  me. 
Not  without  some  misgivings  I  decided  upon  Terre  Haute. 

Before  going  it  was  very  desirable  that  I  should 
be  ordained,  that  I  might  legally  perform  wedding 
ceremonies  and  without  impropriety  administer  the 
sacraments.  In  the  Congregational  churches,  when  a 
man  desires  to  be  ordained  to  the  ministry,  a  council 
of  neighboring  Congregational  churches  is  called.  It  is 
attended  by  the  minister  and  one  lay  delegate  from 
each  church.  The  candidate  describes  his  spiritual  ex- 
perience and  his  "call  to  the  ministry"  and  defines  his 
theological  views.  An  oral  examination  follows,  par- 
ticipated in  by  all  the  members  of  the  council,  both  lay 
and  clerical;  and,  if  satisfactory,  he  is  ordained  with 
appropriate  services.  Such  a  council  was  called  by  the 
Farmington  church.  The  paper  which  I  read  was  a 
brief  and  simple  statement  of  what  was  known  then  as 
the  New  School  theology.  It  lies  before  me  now.  It 
indicates  either  that  my  father's  theological  views  had 
not  taken  possession  of  me  or  that  I  thought  the  coun- 
cil wanted  a  purely  and  coldly  intellectual  statement, 
and  that  I  tried  to  give  them  what,  in  that  respect,  they 
wanted.  It  is  as  little  like  a  statement  of  religious  faith 
as  a  skeleton  is  like  a  living  man.  It  would  be  interest- 
ing only  to  the  theological  reader,  and  hardly  to  him. 
It  interests  me  only  because  it  indicates  in  a  striking 
manner  the  change  which  has  taken  place  during  the 
last  sixty  years,  not  so  much  in  my  intellectual  con- 
victions as  in  the  nature  of  my  faith,  and  this  interests 


186  REMINISCENCES 

me  because  I  think  it  is  typical  of  a  change  which  has 
taken  place  generally  in  the  churches  and  the  ministry. 
My  statement  consists  of  sixteen  propositions  which, 
with  one  exception,  seem  to  me  now  hardly  more  spirit- 
ual than  an  equal  number  of  propositions  in  Euclid's 
Geometry.  Some  of  the  propositions  in  that  confession 
of  faith  I  should  now  accept,  some  I  should  now  reject, 
but  no  one  of  them  as  mere  intellectual  statements  would 
interest  me.  The  only  clause  which  does  interest  me  is 
the  last  one,  which  I  here  reaflSrm.  It  has  been  con- 
firmed by  the  experience  and  observation  of  a  lifetime: 

Finally,  I  believe  that  all  creeds  and  confessions  of  faith  are 
fallible  and  imperfect;  that  true  religion  is  in  the  heart;  that 
he  whose  life  is  most  nearly  assimilated  to  that  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  in  his  spiritual  communion  with  God  and  his  ac- 
tive, self-denying  love  toward  men,  manifests  thereby  the  best 
evidence  of  true  religion,  while  he,  no  matter  what  his  creed  or 
his  professions  may  be,  who  does  not  in  his  daily  life  manifest 
somewhat  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  is  "none  of  his." 

In  the  examination  which  followed,  my  answers 
must  have  been  fairly  satisfactory,  for  I  was  ordained 
as  an  evangelist  without  objection  from  either  Old 
School  or  New  School  representatives  in  the  council. 
This  was  March  12,  1860.  On  the  31st  day  of  March 
we  arrived  in  Terre  Haute.  It  was  almost  to  a  day 
seven  months  after  we  had  arrived  in  Farmington  for 
a  winter  of  preparation  for  my  new  profession.  My 
eagerness  to  get  at  work  had  shortened  my  anticipated 
year  of  preparation  about  one  half.  My  father's  coun- 
sels in  his  letters  of  July  15  and  31  had  undoubtedly  en- 
couraged me  to  cut  short  my  preliminary  preparation, 
as  they  stimulated  me  to  continue  my  preparation  after 
I  had  received  ordination  and  had  entered  on  my  pas- 
toral work. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A   MID-WESTERN   PARISH   DURING   THE    CIVIL   WAR 

IN  1860  Terre  Haute  was  a  town  of  eighteen  thou- 
sand inhabitants,  situated  a  little  south  of  the  center 
of  the  State  of  Indiana,  but  on  its  extreme  western 
border,  not  over  six  or  seven  miles  from  the  eastern 
border  of  Illinois.  It  had  two  Methodist  churches,  one 
Baptist,  one  Episcopal,  two  Presbyterian  (one  of  them 
Old  School,  one  New  School),  a  Christian  (popularly 
called  "Campbellite"  from  the  name  of  its  founder, 
Alexander  Campbell),  a  Universalist,  a  German  Luth- 
eran, and  a  Roman  Catholic  church,  in  addition  to  the 
Congregational  church  to  which  I  was  temporarily 
called.  It  had  also  a  school  for  the  higher  education  of 
girls,  known  as  a  "Female  College,"  and,  if  I  remem- 
ber aright,  a  State  normal  school.  The  Polytechnic 
School,  which  is  now  one  of  the  features  of  the  city 
and  one  of  the  educational  features  of  the  State,  was 
a  later,  creation.  But  already  in  1860  the  city  was  some- 
thing of  an  educational  as  it  was  something  of  a  railway 
center. 

The  first  settlers  of  the  town  had  been  largely  French, 
and  had  given  to  the  town  its  name  —  High  Land.  To 
one  accustomed  to  the  hills  of  New  England  it  was  not 
very  high.  It  stood  on  a  bluff  rising  probably  between 
one  and  two  hundred  feet  from  the  western  edge  of  the 
Wabash  River  and  about  fifty  feet  above  the  prairie, 
which  extended  to  the  south  and  east.    The  local  pro- 


188  REMINISCENCES 

nunciation  gave  two  syllables  to  the  first  word  —  thus : 
Ter-ra  Hot.  The  brakeman  on  the  train  usually  called 
out  "Tar-hot."  I  wrote  to  my  father-in-law  in  June 
following  our  arrival:  "Terre  Haute  is  a  very  beautiful 
town.  A  German  and  Irish  immigration  has  filled  up  a 
part  of  this  town,  as  of  every  one  in  the  West.  Pigs  or- 
nament the  streets,  and  a  part  of  the  town  is  anything 
but  attractive.  But  that  which  is  occupied  by  the  finer 
residences  is  very  beautiful.  The  homes  are  surrounded 
by  grounds  and  by  fruit  trees,  many  of  them  by  beauti- 
ful gardens."  The  "best  people"  of  the  city  were  mostly 
from  the  Middle  States  —  Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  New 
York,  Delaware,  Maryland;  a  number  also  from  Ken- 
tucky. There  were  only  two  New  England  families  in 
my  congregation,  and,  so  far  as  I  know,  they  were  the 
only  ones  in  town.  "Yankee"  was  distinctly  a  term  of 
opprobrium.  It  did  not  take  my  wife  long  to  find  this 
out.  We  speedily  came  to  regard  ourselves  as  coming, 
not  from  Massachusetts,  but  from  New  York.  Mr. 
Ryce,  who  had  conducted  the  correspondence  with  me, 
made  us  his  guests.  A  large  room  in  the  third  or  attic 
story  was  given  to  me  for  my  study.  A  large  table 
served  the  purpose  of  both  desk  and  bookcase,  for 
my  library  did  not  contain  over  a  score  of  books  —  per- 
haps not  so  many. 

I  soon  found  that  it  was  customary  not  to  open  the 
church  for  service  on  stormy  Sunday  evenings.  The 
attendance  was  so  small  that  it  was  thought  not  worth 
while.  I  asked  Mr.  Ryce  if  he  closed  his  store  on  stormy 
days.  "Certainly  not."  "Yet  I  imagine  the  attendance 
of  customers  is  small."  "Surely."  "It  would  not  be 
good  business,  would  it?"  "Certainly  not."  "Neither," 
I  suggested,  "is  it  good  business  to  close  the  church. 
Let  us  keep  it  open;  but  let  it  be  understood  that  there 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  189 

are  only  two  persons  whose  duty  it  is  to  be  present  — 
the  sexton  and  the  preacher.  If  no  one  else  comes,  we 
will  close  the  church  and  go  home."  We  never  had  to 
close  the  church.  I  very  soon  organized  a  congrega- 
tional Bible  class  which  met  one  evening  in  the  week  at 
private  houses.  Membership  was  not  confined  to  mem- 
bers of  my  own  congregation;  nor  was  any  kind  of  faith 
or  unfaith  a  condition  of  or  a  bar  to  membership.  The 
subject  of  our  study  was  the  life  of  Christ.  There  was 
absolute  and  untrammeled  freedom  of  opinion;  equal 
facility  for  the  Calvinist  to  insist  on  verbal  inspiration, 
and  for  the  deist  to  deny  all  miracles  and  to  interpret 
Christ's  cursing  of  the  fig  tree  as  a  sign  of  ill  temper.  It 
required  a  little  tact  and  occasional  authority  to  prevent 
a  debate,  but  not  much.  It  required  a  good  deal  of  pre- 
paratory study  to  make  myself  ready  to  meet  so  wide  a 
range  of  opinions  and  questionings.  But  familiarity 
with  the  life  of  Christ  was  what  I  preeminently  needed 
for  my  ministry.  My  class  compelled  me  to  acquire 
that  familiarity,  but  it  did  for  me  much  more.  It 
enabled  me,  nay,  it  compelled  me,  to  see  how  the  life 
and  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ  seemed  to  the  average 
layman  when  applied  to  his  life  and  his  beliefs.  I  was 
able  to  get  from  my  class,  what  the  preacher  is  not  able 
to  get  from  his  congregation,  an  immediate  response;  to 
see  what  the  Gospels  meant,  not  in  the  original  Greek 
to  the  disciples  in  the  first  century,  but  in  the  English 
tongue  and  in  their  modern  applications  to  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men  in  the  nineteenth  century.  In  short, 
it  enabled  me  to  study  the  Gospels  not  merely  as  litera- 
ture, but  as  a  guide  to  life. 

That  he  may  understand  the  events  which  follow  I 
must  drop  the  narration  at  this  point,  and  ask  the 
reader  to  go  back  a  quarter  of  a  century  to  the  history 


190  REMINISCENCES 

of  the  origin  and  development  of  the  church  to  which 
I  had  been  brought. 

In  1834  (the  year  before  I  was  born)  a  young  man. 
Rev.  Merrick  A.  Jewett,  started  from  Baltimore  on 
horseback  to  ride  to  St.  Louis,  Missouri,  in  search  of  a 
missionary  field  in  the  Far  West.  His  theological  edu- 
cation had  been  secured  under  an  independent  Presby- 
terian clergyman  of  Baltimore,  and  he  was  himself  an 
independent  in  temperament  and  conviction.  Whether 
he  planned  the  horseback  ride  of  a  thousand  miles  be- 
cause he  thought  it  would  restore  his  health  or  because 
he  had  so  much  health  that  he  anticipated  enjoyment 
from  the  ride,  I  do  not  know.  He  stopped  on  a  Satur- 
day noon  in  Terre  Haute  at  the  only  inn  of  any  preten- 
sion in  what  was  at  that  time  a  village  of  about  eight 
hundred  people. 

As  the  stranger  came  up  from  dinner  and  stood  upon  the 
generous  portico  which  extended  over  the  sidewalk,  across  the 
entire  front  of  the  old  tavern,  his  horse  having  been  fed  and 
brought  from  the  stable,  ready  for  him  to  resume  his  journey, 
he  found  a  group  of  men  examining  his  horse  and  commenting 
on  its  strength  and  beauty.  In  answer  to  a  question  from  Cap- 
tain Wasson,  the  landlord,  as  to  ownership,  Mr.  Jewett  stepped 
forward  and  said  that  the  horse  belonged  to  him.  "And  who 
are  you,  sir?"  "My  name  is  Jewett;  I  am  from  Baltimore.  I 
am  a  minister  of  the  Gospel  on  my  way  to  St.  Louis  to  seek  a 
field  of  labor,"  was  the  answer.  "And  did  you  ride  that  horse 
all  the  way  from  Baltimore?"  Upon  receiving  an  afiirmative 
answer,  one  of  the  company  said,  "You  need  n't  be  in  a  hurry — 
just  stay  over  Sunday,  and  it  shan't  cost  you  a  cent,  and  we 
will  have  you  preach  for  us."  These  gentlemen,  Mr.  Jewett's 
first  acquaintances,  having  prevailed  upon  the  young  minister 
to  remain  with  them,  although  none  of  them  were  church 
members,  used  every  effort  to  get  a  large  congregation  for  the 
Sunday  service.  They  secured  the  court-house,  swept  it  out 
themselves,  rang  the  bell,  and  by  personal  effort  secured  a  large 
attendance.    After  the  morning  service  notice  was  given  that 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  191 

there  would  be  preaching  in  the  evening  at  early  candlelight, 
and  as  many  as  could  make  it  convenient  were  asked  to  bring 
a  candle.^ 

The  next  week  an  impromptu  town  meeting-  was  held; 
resolutions  were  passed  that  it  was  highly  desirable  that 
the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  should  be  established  in 
Terre  Haute  and  that  the  Reverend  Merrick  A.  Jewett 
was  eminently  qualified  to  discharge  successfully  the 
sacred  duties  devolving  upon  the  pastor  of  a  church;  a 
salary  was  pledged  and  a  committee  was  appointed  to 
ascertain  from  him  whether  he  would  consent  to  settle 
in  the  town  as  a  minister  of  the  Gospel.  This  was  on 
November  13,  1834.  His  consent  having  been  obtained, 
he  went  home  to  bring  his  bride  back  with  him. 
Whether  she  came  on  horseback  also  history  does  not 
inform  us.  Immediately  on  his  return,  on  December  29, 
1834,  the  pastor-elect  of  the  church,  which  as  yet  had 
no  existence,  invited  all  who  loved  Jesus  Christ  to  meet 
together  and  organize  a  church.  Six  men  and  five  wo- 
men responded  to  the  call.  Behind  them  stood  a  con- 
siderable number  of  citizens  who  were  not  prepared  to 
unite  with  the  church,  but  were  prepared  to  give  it 
financial  support. 

The  church  thus  organized  continued  for  six  years 
without  any  formal  creed  or  any  ecclesiastical  connec- 
tion with  any  of  the  denominations.  Because  it  was  not 
anything  else  it  was  Congregational,  or,  to  use  the  more 
accurate  English  equivalent.  Independent,  and  Mr. 
Jewett  was  reengaged  from  year  to  year.  Not  until  1850 
was  the  church  formally  received  by  a  Council  into  the 
fellowship  of  the  Congregational  churches;  at  the  same 
time  Mr.  Jewett  was  formally  installed  as  its  pastor. 

^  From  a  paper  read  by  Mr.  Frederick  A.  Ross  at  the  sixtieth  anniversary 
of  the  founding  of  the  First  Congregational  Church  of  Terre  Haute. 


192  REMINISCENCES 

This  occurred,  however,  approximately  as  soon  as  there 
were  enough  Congregational  churches  in  the  vicinity 
to  make  such  fellowship  real  and  effective. 

In  this  history  of  the  church  I  have  thus  far  followed 
its  official  or  semi-official  records.  It  is  interesting,  how- 
ever, to  add  that  at  the  time  of  my  life  in  Terre  Haute 
I  was  informed  that  the  chairman  of  the  town  meeting 
which  invited  Mr.  Jewett  to  organize  a  church  and  which 
pledged  to  him  a  salary  was  a  well-known  gambler,  but 
a  public-spirited  citizen,  who  interested  himself  in  get- 
ting a  church  in  Terre  Haute  as  he  might  have  interested 
himself  in  getting  a  railway,  and  no  more  thought  it 
necessary  to  be  a  member  of  the  church  than  he  would 
have  thought  it  necessary  to  be  a  stockholder  in  that 
railway.  That  an  entire  community  should  recognize 
the  need  of  a  church,  as  it  might  recognize  the  need  of  a 
fire  department  or  a  public  school  system,  seems  to  me 
to  lend  confirmation  to  the  saying  of  Sabatier  that 
"man  is  incurably  religious."  When  I  reached  Terre 
Haute  in  1860,  the  church  occupied  the  largest  church 
building  in  the  town,  and  its  membership  on  the  roll 
numbered  upwards  of  two  hundred,  though  I  am  afraid 
the  roll  included  a  considerable  number  of  absentees. 

Dr.  Jewett  had  enjoyed  an  unusually  successful  pas- 
torate. Why  he  resigned  I  never  knew.  The  church  met 
his  resignation  by  giving  him  a  year's  vacation  and  agree- 
ing to  provide  for  the  pulpit  during  his  absence.  It  was 
to  furnish  this  supply  that  I  had  come  to  Terre  Haute. 
The  month  after  my  arrival  his  resignation  was  repeated. 
A  council  of  churches  called  to  give  its  counsel,  advised 
the  church  to  accept  the  resignation,  and  the  church, 
acting  on  this  advice,  accepted  the  resignation  by  a 
vote  of  thirty-six  to  twelve;  the  congregation  by  fifty- 
seven  to  fifty.   Despite  repeated  invitations.  Dr.  Jewett 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  193 

never  preached  in  the  pulpit  of  that  church  again,  though 
once  he  united  with  me  in  administering  the  communion 
and  once  joined  with  me  and  other  ministers  in  speak- 
ing at  a  union  meeting. 

The  inevitable  result  followed :  a  division  of  the  church 
and  congregation  for  the  time  into  two  factions  —  Jewet- 
tites  and  Abbottites.  Under  these  circumstances,  had 
we  left  at  the  close  of  the  summer,  according  to  our 
original  plan,  our  leaving  would  have  converted  a  com- 
paratively quiet  difference  of  sentiment  into  an  open 
church  quarrel.  It  would  have  been  said  with  truth  that 
I  had  been  driven  from  my  post;  would  have  seemed 
to  be,  and  in  fact  would  have  been,  a  soldier's  deser- 
tion of  his  post  because  it  was  a  post  of  difficulty.  Our 
confidence  in  the  church  was  expressed  in  the  best  pos- 
sible way,  by  hiring  a  house  for  the  rest  of  the  season 
for  which  I  was  originally  engaged  —  that  is,  until  the 
spring  of  1861. 

The  threatened  division  in  the  church  was  not  our 
only  problem.  In  the  autumn  of  1860  God  had  given 
us  our  second  child,  a  daughter.  This  was  one  reason 
why  we  had  gone  to  housekeeping.  How  to  support  a 
wife  and  two  children  on  one  thousand  dollars  a  year, 
and  live  and  dress  as  the  pastor  of  the  most  aristo- 
cratic and  influential  church  in  the  city  was  expected 
to  live  and  dress,  was  an  economic  problem  of  no  little 
difficulty. 

There  are  two  ways  of  carrying  out  my  father's  wise 
advice,  "Always  spend  less  than  you  earn."  One  is  to 
decrease  expenditures;  the  other  is  to  increase  income. 
We  pursued  both  courses.  I  had  read  in  John  Stuart 
Mill  that  it  is  a  fair  division  of  labor  between  husband 
and  wife  if  the  husband  earns  the  money  and  the  wife 
expends  it.    Always  has  it  seemed  to  me  a  shameful 


194  REMINISCENCES 

humiliation  for  a  husband  to  require  his  wife  to  come  to 
him  for  every  item  of  money  she  wants  as  she  wants  it. 
My  wife  had  an  allowance  paid  to  her  as  regularly  as 
my  money  was  paid  to  me.  The  allowance  was  deter- 
mined in  conference  between  us,  and  its  amount  de- 
pended on  our  annual  income.  My  wife  set  her  wits  to 
work  to  keep  household  and  personal  expenses  within 
this  allowance.  The  only  fault  that  I  could  ever  find 
with  her  administration  was  that  too  large  a  share  of 
the  allowance  went  to  the  household,  too  small  a  share 
to  herself. 

In  choosing  our  one-storied  cottage  for  our  residence 
we  had  cut  our  garment  according  to  our  cloth.  It  was 
a  very  small  garment;  but  then  we  had  very  little  cloth. 
Off  the  diminutive  parlor  was  a  little  cubby-hole  of  a 
room,  just  big  enough  for  a  table  and  one  chair.  This 
was  my  study.  The  few  books  I  possessed  found  book- 
room  in  the  parlor.  How  often  have  I  come  out  of  that 
study  into  the  parlor  for  a  book  entirely  oblivious  of 
the  caller  sitting  there,  until  my  wife  waked  me  out  of 

my  dreamland  with  the  words,  "Lyman,  Mrs. is 

calling  on  us!" 

While  my  wife  saved  money  I  set  to  work  to  earn 
some.  I  began  sending  occasional  contributions  to  the 
Eastern  press;  but  I  think  I  never  wrote  unless  I  had 
something  which  I  wished  to  say  to  another  audience 
than  my  Terre  Haute  congregation.  The  pay  was  very 
little;  often  there  was  none.  But  at  a  time  when  an  un- 
expected bill  of  ten  dollars  kept  me  awake  half  the  night 
wondering  how  I  could  meet  it,  a  very  little  payment  was 
gladly  welcomed.  Two  years  later  my  Uncle  John  was 
engaged  in  writing  for  a  subscription  publisher  a  his- 
tory of  the  Civil  War  —  writing  as  the  war  progressed. 
He  employed  me  to  write  for  him  an  account  of  the 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  195 

Western  campaign,  though  this  was  not  until  the  year 
1863. 

As  I  was  the  latest  comer  to  the  Terre  Haute  pulpit, 
it  was  natural  to  invite  me  to  give  the  Commencement 
address  in  the  summer  of  1860  for  the  Terre  Haute 
Female  College.  I  had  never  heard  of  the  composite 
authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  or  of  the  priestly  and  the 
prophetic  documents;  but  I  recognize,  as  the  most  casual 
reader  of  Genesis  cannot  fail  to  recognize,  that  it  con- 
tains two  stories  of  the  creation  and  that  they  are  not 
altogether  harmonious.  The  first  chapter  declares  that 
God  made  man  in  his  own  image  —  "male  and  female 
created  he  them "  —  the  woman  as  truly  in  the  divine 
image  as  the  man.  The  third  chapter  declares  that  God 
made  man  first  and  woman  as  an  afterthought  to  be  his 
"helpmeet."  This  contrast  furnished  the  basis  of  my 
Commencement  address.  The  world,  I  said,  has  ac- 
cepted the  second  narrative;  has  treated  woman  as  made 
for  man;  and  has  shaped  and  fashioned  her  education 
accordingly.  She  has  sometimes  been  his  servant,  some- 
times his  parlor  ornament,  sometimes  his  companion; 
but  always  measured  by  her  adaptation  to  his  service. 
The  first  narrative  furnishes  us  with  a  very  different 
ideal  of  woman  and  her  place  in  creation.  She  is  no 
more  made  for  man  than  man  for  her.  They  are  made 
for  each  other.  It  is  true  that  to  be  a  wife  and  a  mother 
is  the  highest  function  a  woman  can  fulfill.  But  it  is  no 
less  true  that  to  be  a  husband  and  a  father  is  the  high- 
est function  a  man  can  fulfill.  She  is  no  more  to  be  edu- 
cated for  him  than  he  is  to  be  educated  for  her;  no  more 
to  be  educated  to  be  a  wife  and  a  mother  than  he  is  to 
be  a  husband  and  a  father.  She  is  to  be  educated  to  be 
a  woman,  as  he  is  to  be  a  man. 

This  was  more  radical  doctrine  then  than  now;  though 


196  REMINISCENCES 

as  far  removed  from  John  Stuart  Mill's  doctrine  that 
there  is  no  inherent  difference  between  man  and  woman 
as  it  is  from  the  barbarian's  doctrine  that  the  difference 
is  that  between  a  superior  and  an  inferior.  The  address 
attracted  some  attention  and  was  welcomed  by  the  col- 
lege as  a  true  interpretation  of  its  ideals;  and  in  the 
autumn  I  was  engaged  for  a  time  to  act  as  chaplain  to 
the  college  and  to  teach  the  senior  class  philosophy.  At 
the  same  time  I  had  an  opportunity  to  do  some  tutoring 
in  my  home  for  a  private  pupil. 

It  is  easier  to  report  a  man's  labors  than  his  wife's 
economies.  They  are  so  minute  that  he  rarely  knows 
them,  and  so  habitual  that  she  is  hardly  conscious  of 
them.  I  have  come  across  some  letters  of  my  wife's 
written  to  her  father  about  this  time,  which  will  give  a 
better  idea  of  some  of  our  household  perplexities  and 
how  they  were  met  than  I  could  possibly  give.  From 
them  I  select  one:  — 

Thursday  Morn.  Have  just  come  from  market  —  it  is  not 
yet  five  o'clock.  .  .  .  Shall  I  tell  you  what  I  got?  First,  a 
little  piece  of  beefsteak  for  dinner.  I  shall  not  be  at  home, 
Lyman  is  away,  so  I  got  a  very  small  piece  for  a  dime;  three 
bunches  of  beets  (five  in  each),  a  dime;  two  quarts  of  "string" 
beans,  a  dime;  two  pounds  of  butter,  two  dimes;  two  spring 
chickens,  alive,  two  dimes;  three  quarts  raspberries,  three 
dimes.  The  chickens  are  for  supper  for  Lyman,  who  will,  we 
expect,  come  home  this  afternoon. 

The  servant  problem  appears  to  have  been  in  all  ages 
of  the  world  and  in  all  communities  unsolved  if  not  un- 
solvable.  I  sometimes  wish  that  a  part  of  the  feminine 
energies  which  are  now  being  directed  to  the  determina- 
tion of  political  issues  could  be  directed  to  deciding 
aright  the  more  important  question  how  so  to  adjust 
and  administer  the  home  as  to  make  domestic  service  a 


A  MID-WESTERN   PARISH  197 

recognized  and  honored  vocation.  There  were  in  Terra 
Haute  in  1860-65  some  peculiar  difficulties  in  this 
problem.  There  was  in  the  city  no  intelligence  office  to 
which  servants  could  go  to  find  a  place  or  housekeepers 
to  find  a  servant.  If  a  lady  wished  a  maid,  she  told  her 
friends,  the  report  of  her  need  was  circulated,  and  if  any 
friend  of  hers  knew  of  a  maid,  or  any  friend  of  a  maid 
seeking  a  place  happened  to  hear  of  this  lady,  the  in- 
formation was  given.  This  process  produced  sometimes 
singular  servants  and,  I  presume,  also  singular  mistresses. 
One  maid  I  happen  to  remember  whose  perpetual  surprise 
furnished  us  with  perpetual  amusement.  She  had  come 
from  southern  Illinois,  popularly  dubbed  "Egypt." 
She  looked  on  with  wonder  when  my  wife  rolled  the 
dining-table  to  one  side  to  sweep,  for  never  before  had 
she  seen  a  table  "on  wheels";  when,  in  dusting  the 
piano,  the  keys  struck  the  wires  and  some  notes  were 
sounded,  she  expressed  her  bewilderment  by  the  phrase, 
"Why,  the  critter  speaks,  doesn't  it.?"  When  my  wife 
lighted  the  gas,  she  fled  in  terror  halfway  across  the 
room  from  the  magic  which  brought  a  flame  of  fire  from 
the  wall. 

Despite  my  additional  earnings,  which  were  small, 
and  my  wife's  economies,  which  were  great,  we  should 
have  found  it  difficult  indeed  to  live  within  our  income 
had  it  not  been  for  the  chronic  hospitality  of  our  people. 
Their  gifts  were  of  almost  daily  occurrence.  Fruits  and 
vegetables  from  the  gardens  and  bakings  from  the 
kitchens  were  continually  left  by  considerate  parish- 
ioners at  our  cottage  door.  I  recall  one  young  man,  who 
was  more  familiar  with  the  game  of  poker  than  with 
either  church  or  prayer-meeting,  who  used  to  bring  to 
us  prairie  chickens  on  his  return  from  his  hunting  expedi- 
tions in  the  neighboring  State  of  Illinois,  and  another 


/ 


198  REMINISCENCES 

gentleman,  a  member  of  the  congregation,  but  not  of  the 
church,  the  owner  and  driver  of  a  beautiful  span  of 
horses,  who,  when  he  was  in  town,  came  every  few  weeks 
to  take  my  wife  and,  when  my  engagements  permitted, 
myself  for  a  drive.  One  summer  my  wife  went  East 
with  the  children.  In  her  absence  I  was  not  allowed  to 
live  at  home,  but  was  made  the  guest  of  different  house- 
holds in  the  congregation.  I  accepted  these  invitations 
not  to  save  money,  but  to  save  myself  from  home- 
sickness; but  they  did  save  money. 

So  the  summer  wore  away  and  the  fall  came  on. 
Meanwhile  came  another  cause  of  anxiety,  far  more 
serious  than  either  the  division  in  the  church  or  the 
meager  salary.  The  slavery  question  had  driven  all 
other  questions  out  of  politics.  It  had  destroyed  the 
old  parties  and  created  new  ones.  The  Whig  party  was 
dead,  the  Democratic  party  was  divided.  The  Repub- 
lican party  pledged  itself  to  no  further  extension  of 
slavery;  but  the  Republican  party,  as  the  election  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  showed,  had  only  a  plurality,  not  a 
majority,  of  the  voters,  and  was  itself  far  from  united. 
Its  constituents  included  men  who  were  as  hostile  to 
slavery  as  the  abolitionists,  but  who  thought  the  pro- 
gramme of  the  abolitionists  impractical,  and  men  as  in- 
different to  slavery  as  the  Douglas  Democrats,  but  who 
thought  the  device  of  "squatter  sovereignty"  no  solu- 
tion of  the  national  problem.  Thousands  of  voters  in 
both  parties  did  not  decide  until  November  whether 
they  would  vote  for  Lincoln  or  Douglas.  There  was  a 
little  remnant  who  tried  to  content  themselves  by  cry- 
ing "Peace!  Peace!"  when  there  was  no  peace,  but  the 
vote  for  Bell  and  Everett,  their  candidates,  showed  them 
to  be  a  negligible  quantity. 

This  division  in  the  Republican  party  was  nowhere 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  199 

more  marked  than  in  Indiana.  Henry  S.  Lane,  who  had 
come  from  the  Whig  party,  represented  the  conserva- 
tive element;  Ohver  P.  Morton,  who  had  been  a  Demo- 
crat, represented  the  progressive  element.  Happily  for 
the  party  and  for  the  State,  a  fusion  of  the  two  elements 
was  effected  —  Mr.  Lane  was  nominated  for  Governor 
and  Mr.  Morton  for  Lieutenant-Governor.  Subsequent 
events  justified  the  rumor  that  this  nomination  was  the 
result  of  a  "gentleman's  agreement"  between  the  two 
candidates.  After  the  election  of  both  Governor  and 
Lieutenant-Governor  by  about  ten  thousand  majority, 
Mr.  Lane  resigned  and  was  elected  United  States  Senator 
by  a  Republican  Legislature,  and  Mr.  Morton  became 
Governor.  He  proved  to  be  one  of  the  great  war  Gov- 
ernors of  the  period.  He  was  under  forty  years  of  age, 
a  man  of  rare  executive  ability,  of  indomitable  courage, 
of  strong  and  clear  convictions,  and  with  the  kind  of 
eloquence  which  comes  from  the  possession  of  such 
convictions  and  the  ability  to  give  them  forceful  ex- 
pression. On  March  10,  nearly  three  weeks  before  my 
arrival,  he  had  spoken  in  Terre  Haute  at  a  ratification 
meeting,  advocating  squarely  the  Lincoln  as  opposed 
to  the  Douglas  method,  and  had  met  the  charge  of  being 
an  abolitionist  with  characteristic  frankness:  "I  am  op- 
posed to  the  diffusion  of  slavery.  I  am  in  favor  of  pre- 
serving the  Territories  to  freedom,  of  encouraging, 
elevating,  and  protecting  free  labor;  at  the  same  time 
conscientiously  believing  that  with  slavery  in  the  several 
States  we  have  nothing  to  do  and  no  right  to  interfere. 
If  this  makes  me  an  abolitionist,  then  I  am  one,  and  my 
political  enemies  may  make  the  most  of  it."  It  would 
have  been  well  for  the  Republican  party  and  for  the 
country  if  all  Republicans  had  possessed  Governor 
Morton's  courage  and  shared  his  convictions. 


200  REMINISCENCES 

Usually  in  America  the  excitement  of  a  campaign 
comes  to  an  end  on  election  night:  not  so  in  1860.  The 
announcement  of  IVIr.  Lincoln's  election  on  the  evening 
of  election  day  was  greeted  in  Charleston,  South  Caro- 
lina, with  cheers  for  the  Southern  Confederacy.  The 
United  States  Judge  and  the  United  States  District 
Attorney  resigned.  Their  resignations  were  followed  by 
the  resignation  of  one  of  the  United  States  Senators. 
The  Legislature  at  once  called  a  Convention  to  consider 
the  state  of  the  country.  That  the  object  of  this  Con- 
vention was  to  prepare  for  secession  was  well  understood, 
though  not  formally  avowed.  There  were  immistakable 
indications  that  other  States  were  preparing  to  follow 
the  lead  of  South  Carolina. 

For  secession  and  its  inevitable  consequences  the 
North  was  ill  prepared.  Brave  men  who  were  ready  to 
meet  the  threatened  war  if  it  came  yet  confessed  their 
dread  of  it.  "The  heavens  are  indeed  black,"  wrote 
Senator  Dawes,  of  Massachusetts,  "and  an  awful  storm 
is  gathering.  ...  I  am  well-nigh  appalled  at  its  awful 
and  inevitable  consequences."  In  every  community 
were  found  Republicans  who  lamented  that  they  had 
voted  for  Mr.  Lincoln  and  frankly  confessed  that  they 
would  never  have  done  so  could  they  have  foreseen  the 
consequences.  Some  proposed  to  escape  those  conse- 
quences by  surrender.  Three  days  after  the  election  of 
Mr.  Lincoln  Mr.  Greeley  wrote  in  the  New  York 
"Tribune":  "If  the  cotton  States  shall  decide  that  they 
can  do  better  out  of  the  Union  than  in  it,  we  insist  on 
letting  them  go  in  peace."  Others  sought  to  avoid  the 
threatened  war  by  some  new  form  of  compromise.  It 
was  variously  proposed  to  amend  the  Constitution  so  as 
to  give  all  territory  south  of  a  certain  line  to  slavery  and 
all  north  of  it  to  freedom;  to  provide  that  slavery  should 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  201 

never  be  interfered  with  in  the  Territories;  to  recognize 
State  rights  and  deny  to  the  Federal  Government  the 
right  of  coercion;  to  bring  about  the  resignation  of  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  a  new  election ;  to  abolish  the  office  of  Presi- 
dent altogether  and  substitute  an  executive  council  of 
three;  to  repeal  the  Personal  Liberty  Laws  of  the  North, 
which  had  been  enacted  to  prevent  the  enforcement  of 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Law;  to  amend  that  law  so  as  to  give 
the  negro  a  right  to  a  jury  trial;  to  provide  for  the  pay- 
ment to  the  slaveholder  for  rescued  slaves  by  the  county 
where  the  rescue  had  taken  place.  "No  one,"  wrote 
Mr.  Seward,  "has  any  system,  or  any  courage  or  confi- 
dence in  the  Union."  This  was  said  in  Washington.  In 
Indiana  and  Illinois  it  was  seriously  proposed  to  those 
States  which  lay  along  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  Rivers, 
which  could  never  permit  their  exit  to  the  sea  to  pass 
through  a  foreign  and  hostile  territory,  that  they  join 
the  Southern  Confederacy,  bring  in  Ohio  and  Penn- 
sylvania and  perhaps  New  York,  and  leave  abolitionist 
New  England  out  of  the  new  Union;  it  would  be  what 
New  England  deserved,  for  the  country  would  never 
have  been  brought  to  this  pass  had  it  not  been  for  these 
Yankee  agitators.  It  is  useless  to  inquire  what  would 
have  been  |the  result  if  a  Washington  or  a  Jackson  had 
been  at  the  head  of  the  Federal  Government  at  this 
time.  Mr.  Buchanan  had  neither  the  wisdom  of  the  one 
nor  the  courage  of  the  other.  He  could  not  get  above 
the  arts  of  the  politician.  In  his  Message  of  December 
4,  to  please  the  North  he  argued  that  no  State  had  a 
right  to  secede;  to  please  the  South,  that  if  a  State  did 
secede  the  Federal  Government  had  no  right  to  prevent 
the  secession. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  the  country  in  December, 
1860.    In  such  a  time  of  conflicting  counsels  no  private 


202  REMINISCENCES 

citizen  should  be  deemed  a  coward  because  he  keeps 
silent,  or  weak  and  vacillating  because  he  is  inclined 
to  follow  first  one  counsel  and  then  another.  Tradi- 
tions are  then  of  no  avail,  and  most  men  are  guided  by 
traditions.  Parties  have  dissolved,  party  platforms  have 
disappeared,  party  allegiance  no  longer  governs  or  even 
guides.  The  citizen  is  like  a  navigator  who  is  separated 
from  his  fleet  in  a  dense  fog,  hears  whistles  blowing  in 
every  direction,  and  knows  not  which  are  warnings  of 
danger  and  which  are  calls  to  safety.  If  the  fog  has  shut 
down  suddenly  and  he  knows  not  where  he  is,  he  does 
well  to  anchor  or  to  slow  down  his  engines  and  wait  for 
the  fog  to  lift.  The  election  of  Abraham  Lincoln  in  1860 
left  the  country  fog-bound.  A  minority  of  resolute 
spirits  in  the  South  were  determined  to  dissolve  the 
Union  and  erect  a  new  Republic  with  slavery  as  its 
corner-stone.  A  minority  of  resolute  spirits  in  the  North 
were  equally  determined  to  maintain  the  Union  and 
restrict  slavery,  expecting  its  eventful  overthrow.  But 
the  great  majority  both  South  and  North  were  doubt- 
ful, perplexed,  anxious:  not  knowing  what  to  think  or 
which  way  to  look  for  escape  from  impending  calamity. 
Prior  to  the  election  in  November  I  do  not  recall  that 
I  spoke  in  the  pulpit  at  all  on  the  political  issues.  There 
were  two  reasons  for  this  silence:  one  was  my  father's 
counsel,  first  to  get  my  influence,  then  to  use  it;  the 
other  was  that  I  did  not  wish  to  use  it  in  favor  of  the 
election  of  the  Republican  candidate.  I  have  never  be- 
lieved that  the  minister  should  be  the  advocate  of  a 
political  party  or  a  political  candidate.  He  may  urge 
temperance,  but  not  the  claims  of  the  Prohibition  party; 
social  reform,  but  not  the  claims  of  the  Progressive 
party;  liberty,  but  not  the  claims  of  the  Republican 
party.    I  do  not  know  that  I  have  ever  departed  from 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  203 

this  principle  in  my  pulpit  utterances.  I  did  not  do  so 
in  Terre  Haute.  Nor  was  it  likely  that  in  the  first  few 
months  of  my  ministry,  a  stranger  among  strangers,  I 
could  exert  much  influence  on  the  moral  issues  involved. 
I  must  secure  the  confidence  of  the  community  before  I 
could  even  get  a  hearing.  And  this  was  the  more  im- 
portant because  there  was  little  in  common  in  our  point 
of  view.  There  was  very  little  anti-slavery  sentiment  in 
Terre  Haute;  so  little  that  when,  two  years  later,  a  Re- 
publican orator  —  an  officer  in  the  Union  army  —  was 
speaking  at  a  mass-meeting  in  favor  of  enlisting  the 
negro  in  the  Union  cause,  the  sentiment  which  evoked 
the  most  uproarious  applause  was,  "I  hate  a  nigger 
worse  than  I  hate  the  devil." 

But  when,  after  the  election,  these  impractical 
schemes  of  surrender,  evasion,  and  compromise  were 
everywhere  discussed,  I  thought  the  time  had  come  for 
me  to  speak.  I  was  known;  I  believed  I  was  respected; 
I  was  sure  I  should  be  listened  to.  And  I  was  not  mis- 
taken. On  the  9th  of  December,  the  Sunday  following 
Mr.  Buchanan's  Message,  I  preached  a  sermon  on  the 
condition  of  the  country.  I  had  at  least  one  equipment 
for  the  task.  I  did  not  share  either  the  common  surprise 
or  the  common  perplexity.  The  reader  may  remember 
that  in  1856  I  had  written  to  my  cousin,  now  my  wife, 
that  I  did  not  see  how  war  could  be  avoided,  and  I 
hoped  that,  if  it  came,  I  might  have  some  part  in  the 
battle  for  freedom.  The  threat  of  disunion,  therefore, 
did  not  surprise  me.  Nor  did  it  make  me  hesitate.  For 
I  preferred  a  divided  country,  one  half  of  it  free,  to  a 
united  country,  all  of  it  slave.  I  had  made  up  my  mind 
that  the  only  possible  settlement  of  the  issue  was  to  be 
found  in  the  motto:  ''Liberty  national,  slavery  sec- 
tional." And  I  was  prepared  to  set  that  principle  by  the 


204  REMINISCENCES 

side  of  the  current  proposals  of  compromise  for  the 
popular  judgment. 

Before  preaching  the  sermon  I  counseled  with  Mr. 
Ryce,  who  was  my  best  friend  and  my  wisest  adviser. 
He  was  a  lover  of  peace  and  hated  strife.    He  advised 
me  against  speaking  upon  the  subject  at  all.   There  were 
some  weighty  reasons  for  this  counsel.    Such  a  sermon 
would  be  an  innovation,  even  a  startling  innovation. 
Whatever  might  be  the  custom  in  New  England,  the 
people  of  Indiana  were  not  accustomed  to  political  ser- 
mons.   Mine  would  be  the  first  one  ever  preached  in  a 
Terre  Haute  church.    In  fact,  so  far  as  I  know,  I  was  the 
only  minister  in  the  town  who  dealt  with  slavery  at  all  in 
the  pulpit  throughout  the  Civil  War,   The  people  of  Terre 
Haute  were  loyal;  but  many  of  them  were  Southern  in 
their  origin  and  in  their  sympathies,  and  would  resent  any 
anti-slavery  utterances.   The  division  in  the  church  was 
not  ended;  it  might  break  out  again  at  any  time  —  as 
indeed  it  did  a  little  later.    The  epithet  Unitarian  had 
been  applied  to  me  but  had  not  hurt  me,  because  the 
people  cared  nothing  for  theological  distinctions.    But 
the  epithet  abolitionist  would  not  be  regarded  so  lightly. 
Such  an  utterance  as  I  proposed  would  be  perilous  to 
the  church  and  might  be  perilous  to  me.    Party  feeling 
ran  very  high.    Lovejoy  had  been  murdered  in  Illinois 
for  his  anti-slavery  utterances.    Anti-slavery  meetings 
had  been  broken  up  by  mobs  and  even  practically  for- 
bidden in  the  East  by  the  authorities.   At  the  same  time 
Mr.  Ryce  was  careful  to  make  it  clear  that  neither  he 
nor  any  one  else  in  the  church  would  attempt  to  inter- 
fere with  my  personal  liberty.    I  had  asked  his  advice, 
and  he  gave  it  to  me. 

It  has  been  throughout  my  life  my  principle,  not  as 
clearly  defined  then  as  it  has  been  since,  to  ask  courage 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  205 

to  tell  me  what  to  do"and  caution  to  tell  me  how  to  do  it. 
I  had  left  the  law  for  the  ministry  partly  that  I  might  be 
free  to  minister  directly  to  the  spiritual  life  of  the  in- 
dividual, partly  that  I  might  be  able  to  take  an  active 
part  in  the  solution  of  the  great  and,  as  I  thought, 
fundamental  moral  question  before  the  community. 
The  opportunity  was  given  me.  I  could  not  refuse  it. 
But  my  friend's  counsel  enabled  me  to  speak  in  such 
fashion  as  secured  a  patient  and  even  a  somewhat  sym- 
pathetic hearing.  The  church  was  crowded;  the  Re- 
publican paper  published  the  sermon  in  full.  And  even 
the  Southern  Democratic  paper  granted  to  its  spirit  a 
qualified  commendation.  The  state  of  feeling  in  the 
city  on  the  general  subject  is  perhaps  slightly  indicated 
by  the  fact  that  when  I  reached  home  a  little  after  mid- 
night, having  been  kept  at  the  newspaper  office  correct- 
ing the  proof  of  the  sermon,  I  found  my  wife  very  anxious 
lest  I  had  been  assaulted  on  the  street,  and  just  preparing 
to  sally  out  in  a  search  for  me.  And  she  was  not  easily 
alarmed. 

Of  this  sermon  I  have  no  report.  The  printed  report 
which  I  once  had  has  disappeared,  and  an  account  which 
I  might  give  from  recollection  would  be  untrustworthy 
and  without  value.  I  can  only  say  that,  on  the  one  hand, 
I  emphatically  expressed  my  disbelief  in  the  doctrines  of 
the  Garrisonian  abolitionists,  which  I  thought  then  and 
still  think  to  have  been  not  only  impracticable  but  a 
cowardly  evasion  of  responsibility;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  declared  that  the  issue  joined  between  North 
and  South,  union  and  secession,  liberty  and  slavery,  was 
one  that  could  not  be  settled  by  any  compromise,  however 
sagaciously  framed,  but  was  a  phase  of  the  world-wide 
issue  between  a  Christian  and  a  pagan  civilization.  I 
beHeve  that  two  families  with  Southern  sympathies  left 


206  REMINISCENCES 

the  congregation  In  consequence  of  the  sermon.  But 
more  came  in  to  take  their  places  and  my  reengagement 
in  January  at  an  increased  salary  satisfied  me  that  I 
had  the  confidence  of  my  church  and  congregation. 

But  after  the  Presidential  nomination,  in  June  or 
July,  nothing  interested  the  people  in  Terre  Haute  ex- 
cept politics.  The  Sabbath  services  were  well  attended. 
But  the  prayer-meetings  were  not.  I  had  always  heard 
that  the  prayer-meeting  is  the  thermometer  of  the 
church.  The  way  to  raise  the  mercury  in  the  thermome- 
ter is  to  warm  the  room.  I  attempted  to  warm  the 
room  by  raising  the  mercury  —  that  is,  to  increase  the 
spiritual  life  in  the  church  by  increasing  the  attendance 
on  the  prayer-meetings.  They  were  held  on  Saturday 
evenings,  and  as  I  made  my  pastoral  calls  and  urged  the 
women  to  come  to  the  prayer-meeting,  I  discovered 
that  they  were  all  eager  to  come,  but  could  not  because 
Saturday  night  was  set  apart  to  get  the  children  washed 
and  the  clothes  laid  out  for  Sunday.  A  change  was 
made  to  Wednesday  evening  —  and  the  attendance  was 
no  better.  I  then  learned  the  difference  between  real 
reasons  and  good  reasons  —  the  reasons  which  have  in- 
duced us  to  act  and  the  reasons  we  give  to  others  for  our 
action.  Two  years  later  I  induced  the  church  to  run  a 
partition  across  the  Sunday-School  room,  making  in 
one  end  of  it  two  rooms  connected  by  folding  doors,  one 
for  my  study,  the  other  for  a  church  parlor.  The  at- 
tendance jumped  at  once  from  fifteen  or  twenty  to  forty 
or  fifty,  sometimes  a  hundred.  It  was  possible  to  hold  a 
social  prayer-meeting  in  a  parlor;  not  possible  to  hold 
one  in  a  lecture  hall. 

When  Dr.  Jewett  returned  to  Terre  Haute  from  the 
East  I  do  not  now  remember.  But  not  long  after  his 
return  he  began  a  series  of  Sunday  morning  services  in 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  207 

the  court-house  where  twenty-six  years  before  he  began 
his  pastorate.  Something  like  a  score  of  the  congrega- 
tion took  their  hymn-books  from  the  church  and  joined 
him  in  these  services.  At  the  same  time  the  reports  were 
repeated  that  the  young  man  now  occupying  the  pulpit 
was  not  orthodox;  that  he  had  leanings  toward  Uni- 
tarianism;  that  there  was  danger  that  he  would  un- 
settle the  faith  of  the  church;  that  his  friends  had 
conspired  to  drive  off  the  old  pastor.  Where  did  those 
reports  come  from.''  Where  does  gossip  ever  come  from.'* 
Where  do  the  weeds  that  spring  up  in  the  garden  bed,  to 
the  great  vexation  of  the  gardener,  come  from.?*  I  do  not 
know.  But  the  fact  that  they  came,  and  that  no  au- 
thoritative denial  was  given  to  them,  widened  the  breach 
in  the  church. 

To  preach  in  the  court-house  to  people  who  never  go 
to  church  is  in  itself  a  very  good  deed.  I  assumed,  and 
the  church  assumed  with  me,  that  this  was  the  motive 
which  inspired  the  court-house  services.  I  had  learned 
from  my  father  and  my  grandfather  that  it  takes  two 
to  make  a  quarrel,  and  I  resolved  not  to  make  one  of 
the  two.  In  this  resolve  I  was  thoroughly  supported  by 
my  wife,  who  paid  no  attention  to  the  prevailing  gossip. 
When,  which  was  not  often,  it  got  a  chance  to  get  in  at 
one  ear,  it  went  straightway  out  of  the  other.  The 
church  took  the  same  attitude  and  was  inspired  by  the 
same  spirit  of  peace  and  good-will.  I  called  on  the  mem- 
bers of  my  church  who  were  taking  an  active  part  in  the 
court-house  services  and  expressed  my  interest  in  their 
enterprise  and  my  hope  for  its  success.  The  result  was 
that  when,  at  the  end  of  three  months,  the  court-house 
services  were  discontinued,  the  members  of  our  church 
and  congregation  came  back  with  no  sense  of  humiliat- 
ing defeat;  there  were  no  asperities  to  be  apologized  for, 


208  REMINISCENCES 

no  broken  friendships  to  be  reknitted,  no  wounded  feel- 
ings to  be  healed.  And  I  may  add  that  if  the  experiment 
had  proved  a  success,  if  out  of  it  there  had  grown  either 
a  permanent  mission  or  a  new  church,  the  results  of  this 
spirit  would  have  been  equally  beneficial.  In  the  one 
case  the  mission  would  have  had  the  sympathy  and  sup- 
port of  the  mother  church;  in  the  other  case  the  two 
sister  churches  would  have  worked  together  in  Christian 
fellowship. 

In  the  midst  of  this  threatened  division  of  the  church 
came  the  assault  on  Fort  Sumter  and  the  President's 
call  for  volunteers.  Before  that  call  had  come  Governor 
Morton  had  sent  to  the  President  the  following  tele- 
gram: "On  behalf  of  the  State  of  Indiana,  I  tender  to 
you  for  the  defense  of  the  Nation,  and  to  uphold  the 
authority  of  the  Government,  ten  thousand  men."  All 
thoughts  of  compromise  were  for  the  time  being  at  an 
end.  The  slavery  question  was  forgotten.  The  only 
issue  recognized  by  the  people  was.  Has  the  Nation  a 
right  to  exist  .5^  The  preservation  of  the  country  was  the 
theme  of  sermons  in  some  churches,  of  prayers  in  many 
churches.  Guards  were  necessary  to  protect  some  of 
the  extreme  Democratic  newspapers  from  mob  violence. 
Volunteers  poured  in  upon  the  recruiting  officers.  Within 
a  week  the  quota  of  Indiana  was  filled  more  than  twice 
over.  A  camp  was  organized  in  the  outskirts  of  Terre 
Haute,  where  on  the  27th  of  May  I  preached  a  sermon 
on  the  text,  "In  the  name  of  our  God  we  set  up  our 
banners."  The  choir  sang  at  the  opening  of  the  service 
"The  Star-Spangled  Banner."  The  Democratic  paper 
advised  them  the  next  time  I  officiated  there  to  conclude 
the  service  by  singing  "Yankee-Doodle-Do."  I  wrote 
for  the  "Congregational  Herald"  of  Chicago  —  a  paper 
which  I  believe  is  no  longer  in  existence  —  defining  the 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  209 

issue  before  the  country:  "We  have  wisdom  to  make  our 
own  laws;  have  we  the  power  to  enforce  them,  or  is  our 
country,  which  has  been  strong  to  defend  itself  against 
foreign  aggression,  to  drop  to  pieces  at  last  of  its  own 
weakness?"  The  Congregational  Association  held  its 
annual  meeting  in  Indianapolis  about  four  weeks  after 
the  attack  on  Fort  Sumter.  It  adopted  resolutions  de- 
claring it  to  be  the  Christian  duty  of  all  men  to  rally  to 
the  support  of  the  country.  On  my  motion  these  resolu- 
tions were  amended  by  adding  one  declaring  that  the 
object  of  the  war  against  the  Union  was  "the  perpetua- 
tion and  extension  of  a  system  of  slavery,  which  is  as 
antagonistic  to  the  plainest  principles  of  humanity  and 
the  simplest  principles  of  the  Gospel  as  it  is  at  last 
confessed  to  be  to  those  principles  of  Hberty  which  un- 
derlie our  Nation,  and  to  which,  under  God,  we  are  in- 
debted for  all  its  prosperity." 

In  reading  this  chapter  the  reader  must  remember 
that  I  was  only  in  my  twenty-fifth  year;  that  this  was 
my  first  parish;  that  I  was  a  comparative  stranger  in  a 
strange  land;  that  I  had  to  acquaint  myself  with  the 
spiritual  and  intellectual  temper  of  a  people  quite  dif- 
ferent from  those  of  New  England,  with  whom  I  was 
familiar;  that  the  conditions  both  in  the  community 
and  in  the  church  were  new  and  strange;  that  I  was  far 
from  my  old  friends  and  advisers,  and  had  to  feel  my 
way  aided  by  the  advice  of  only  two  counselors,  Mr. 
Ryce,  who  understood  Terre  Haute  but  did  not  under- 
stand me;  and  my  wife,  who  understood  me  but  under- 
stood the  people  of  Terre  Haute  better  than  I,  only  as 
a  woman's  intuitions  are  quicker  and  more  trustworthy 
than  a  man's.  Add  to  this  that  I  had  not  learned  that 
the  minister  needs  one  rest  day  in  the  week  as  truly  as 
the  layman;  I  worked  habitually  every  day.    It  is  not. 


210  REMINISCENCES 

then,  altogether  strange  that  my  wife's  apprehensions 
were  reahzed;  and  when  the  summer  came  on,  my  church 
perceived  that  I  needed  a  respite  and  gave  me  a  vaca- 
tion, which  I  spent  in  the  East. 

On  the  Friday  before  I  started  for  the  East  I  saw  a 
mouse  in  my  study,  went  out  into  the  yard,  picked  up  a 
cat  which  belonged  to  us  but  was  imperfectly  domes- 
ticated, and  attempted  to  bring  her  in  to  introduce  her 
to  the  mouse.  She  objected,  struggled  to  get  free, 
scratched,  and  finally  put  her  tooth  into  my  finger.  Then 
I  let  her  go.  My  wife  wanted  me  to  see  a  doctor.  I 
laughed  at  her,  but  so  far  yielded  to  her  persuasions  as 
to  wash  out  the  little  wound,  which  scarcely  bled  at  all, 
and  then  dismissed  the  matter  from  my  mind.  But  by 
Saturday  the  finger  had  swollen  and  the  hand  was  pain- 
ful. I  then  went  to  the  doctor.  The  germ  theory  of 
disease  was  unknown.  Of  infection  I  had  never  heard. 
The  doctor  explained  the  condition  of  my  hand  by  say- 
ing that  the  bite  of  an  angry  animal  was  poisonous, 
"from  the  bite  of  a  cat  to  the  bite  of  a  woman."  On 
Sunday  I  preached  with  my  hand  in  a  poultice  and  my 
arm  in  a  sling.  Monday  I  traveled  on  with  friends,  spent 
a  day  in  considerable  discomfort  at  Niagara  Falls,  and, 
on  arriving  in  New  York,  went  straight  to  the  doctor 
there.  He  told  me  he  thought  he  could  save  my  life,  and 
hoped  he  could  save  my  arm,  up  which  by  that  time  the 
pains  were  shooting  to  the  shoulder,  but  he  doubted 
whether  he  could  save  my  finger.  He  did  save  my  finger, 
"but  I  doubt  whether  I  have  ever  had,  except  for  the 
scarlet  fever  in  my  childhood,  an  illness  more  serious 
than  that  caused  by  this  little  incident. 

The  only  other  incident  in  this  vacation  of  any  interest 
to  the  general  reader  was  a  perplexity  which  illustrates 
an  aphorism  of  my  brother  Austin's  which  I  have  found 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  211 

comforting  in  some  of  life's  trying  experiences:  "Per- 
plexity is  generally  a  choice  of  blessings."  My  Uncle 
John  had  put  my  name  before  a  vacant  Congregational 
parish  in  Meriden,  Connecticut.  At  their  invitation  I 
preached  for  them,  and  received  a  call  to  settle  there. 
The  church  was  a  large  one,  numbering  about  three 
hundred;  the  Sunday-School  was  large  and  flourishing; 
there  was  no  debt;  there  was  a  probable  salary  of  twelve 
hundred  dollars  and  a  parsonage,  "a  very  pleasant  two- 
story  house,  apparently  roomy  and  commodious."  If 
I  had  accepted  the  call,  we  should  have  been  brought 
back  to  our  old  friends,  and  to  our  immediate  and  even 
remote  family  relations.  This  last  would  have  counted 
for  much,  for  the  Abbotts  have  always  been  a  united 
family,  and  the  reader  will  remember  that  my  wife  was 
an  Abbott  on  her  mother's  side.  We  should  have  been 
in  an  intellectual  and  social  atmosphere  congenial  to  us, 
and  in  a  climate  certainly  better  for  my  wife's  health. 
The  summers  of  Terre  Haute  were  long  and  hot.  The 
nights  seemed  hotter  than  the  days,  for  what  breeze 
there  was  went  down  with  the  sun.  Often  my  wife 
would  put  her  pillow  on  the  window-sill  and  sleep  with 
her  head  as  far  out  as  was  safe,  in  order  to  get  a  breath 
of  air.  Sleeping  porches  were  unknown.  I  was  not 
settled  in  Terre  Haute,  but  employed  only  for  the  year. 
I  should  have  been  permanently  settled  in  Meriden.  The 
church  was  apparently  more  spiritually  active  than  the 
church  in  Terre  Haute,  was  a  better  working  force,  and 
had  better  prayer-meetings.  The  slavery  question  was 
not  so  perplexing.  I  wrote  to  my  wife  that  in  New  Eng- 
land all  loyal  supporters  of  the  Government  were  anti- 
slavery,  and  this  was  far  from  true  in  Indiana. 

But  all  these  were  questions  of  secondary  importance. 
My  wife,  in  a  letter  to  me,  put  the  whole  question  in  a 


212  REMINISCENCES 

sentence:  "It  seems  to  me  that  both  places  are  attrac- 
tive, and  the  question  is,  Where  can  we  do  the  most 
good?"  It  seemed  to  us  both  that  we  could  do  the  most 
good  by  remaining  where  we  were  and  by  trying  to  make 
the  Terre  Haute  church  more  spiritually  active,  and  to 
do  what  little  I  could  to  make  the  loyal  supporters  of 
the  Government  also  lovers  of  liberty  for  the  slave  as 
well  as  for  themselves.  I  therefore  declined  the  call, 
with  my  wife's  hearty  approval. 

While  this  question  was  under  consideration  the 
church  brought  no  pressure  to  bear  on  either  of  us  to 
remain,  although  occasional  expressions  made  it  clear 
what  they  generally  felt.  After  the  decision  was  made 
we  were  overwhelmed  with  expressions  of  appreciation 
and  gratitude.  The  culmination  of  these  expressions 
was  reached  a  little  after  Christmas. 

At  the  other  extremity  of  the  city  from  our  home,  a 
mile  away,  was  one  of  the  finest  places  in  Terre  Haute, 
known  as  Strawberry  Hill.  One  afternoon  my  wife  and 
I  were  invited  to  take  tea  at  Strawberry  Hill.  Tea  was 
hardly  over  before  the  young  man  of  the  household 
brought  word  that  an  omnibus  was  outside  waiting  to 
take  us  home.  It  had  come,  he  said,  by  his  order,  but 
he  was  surprised  that  it  had  come  so  soon.  When  we 
reached  our  house,  it  was  dark.  To  arouse  the  maid 
I  began  pulling  the  bell  handle  back  and  forth.  In- 
stantly the  front  door  was  flung  open,  our  host  and  host- 
ess of  the  evening  stood  in  the  open  door  to  admit 
us  to  our  home,  the  before  darkened  house  was  ablaze 
with  light  and  was  filled,  hall,  stairs,  parlors,  with 
members  of  the  congregation. 

When,  the  following  day,  I  attempted  to  express  my 
thanks  in  a  note  to  the  daily  paper,  I  found  myself 
almost  as  much  at  a  loss  as  I  had  been  in  my  impromptu 


A  MID-WESTERN  PARISH  213 

address  of  thanks  the  night  before.  I  finally  hit  upon 
the  plan  of  writing  a  fanciful  description  of  an  invasion 
of  my  home  by  a  body  of  burglars  who  had  gained  access 
to  the  house  during  the  afternoon,  had  brought  with 
them  "a  great  quantity  of  plunder,  evidently  taken 
from  other  houses,  not  only  bread,  cake,  jellies,  ham, 
and  other  articles,  under  the  weight  of  which  my  sub- 
stantial dining-table  bent  (literally  bent,  so  that  it  had 
to  be  supported  in  the  center  by  a  dry-goods  box),  but 
also  a  magnificent  silver  water-pitcher  and  coffee  urn." 
They  also  left  behind  them,  I  said,  $225,  and  a  great 
variety  of  other  articles  of  every  description.  The  local 
readers,  knowing  the  facts,  understood  the  letter,  but 
when  a  prosaic  reporter  in  the  East  made  a  paragraph 
out  of  it,  treating  the  incident  quite  seriously,  I  received 
from  Eastern  friends  some  letters  of  condolence,  and, 
to  correct  misapprehension,  wrote  for  the  New  York 
*' Independent"  a  description  of  my  ministerial  expe- 
rience in  this  mid-Western  parish,  where  my  salary  was 
promptly  paid,  where  I  was  treated  justly  and  even 
generously  by  the  tradesmen,  where  I  preached  tem- 
perance in  a  community  cursed  by  drink  and  liberty  in 
a  community  pervaded  by  pro-slavery  prejudices  and 
"nobody  got  up  and  went  out  of  the  church,"  where  my 
people  vied  with  each  other  in  hospitality,  and  where  I 
was  writing  this  letter  surrounded  by  Christmas  fruits  — 
"books  for  my  library,  silver  both  elegant  and  beautiful 
for  my  table,  toys  for  my  child,  food  for  my  larder." 


CHAPTER  X 

PASTOR  AND   PREACHER* 

WHEN  I  returned  to  Terre  Haute  in  the  fall  of 
1861,  all  hopes  of  a  holiday  march  to  Rich- 
mond and  a  brief  campaign  and  a  speedy  end 
of  the  Confederate  Republic  were  over.  The  disastrous 
battle  of  Bull  Run  had  made  clear  to  the  North  the  seri- 
ousness of  its  undertaking,  and  the  Act  of  Congress  au- 
thorizing a  loan  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  million  dollars 
reflected  the  public  consciousness  and  the  public  resolve. 
From  this  time  on  the  war  excitement  made  spiritual 
work  in  the  parish  diflScult. 

One  Fourth  of  July  two  celebrations  were  held,  one 
by  the  "Butternuts,"  as  the  sympathizers  with  secession 
were  called,  the  other  by  the  loyalists.  There  was  rea- 
sonable dread  of  a  collision  between  the  two.  But  fore- 
warned is  forearmed,  and  the  day  passed  peacefully. 
Once  we  were  thrown  into  alarm  by  the  report  of  a 
threatened  raid  by  Morgan's  Confederate  cavalry. 
They  did,  in  fact,  cross  the  border,  but  did  not  come  as 
far  north  as  Terre  Haute.  We  organized  a  secret  Loyal 
League,  the  only  secret  society  I  ever  joined.  I  do  not 
remember  that  it  had  any  very  important  secrets  to 
preserve,  or  that  it  ever  accomplished  any  particular 

^  A  true  report  of  the  experiences  of  a  pastor  and  preacher  is  necessarily 
made  up  of  incidents  generally  insignificant  in  themselves  and  without  ap- 
parent connection  with  each  other.  I  am  not,  however,  without  hope  that 
this  chapter,  which  is  such  a  report,  may  serve  as  an  encouragement  to  some 
ministers  discouraged  as  I  was  discouraged,  and  an  inspiration  to  some  par- 
ishes to  do  for  their  minister  what  my  considerate  and  loyal  parish  did  for  me. 


PASTOR  AND  PREACHER  215 

achievement.  I  have  always  believed  that  the  best  way 
to  fight  a  secret  foe  is  by  calling  him  into  the  open.  A 
home  guard  was  organized.  Most  of  our  stalwart  men 
were  in  the  field,  but  a  home  guard  might  have  served 
a  useful  purpose  against  a  Butternut  raid  which  we 
had  some  occasion  to  dread.  Every  election  was  a  cam- 
paign on  which  depended,  or  at  least  we  thought  so,  the 
question  whether  Indiana  could  be  kept  in  the  column  of 
loyal  States.  It  was  so  kept,  thanks  to  our  war  Governor, 
as  brave  a  fighter  for  the  loyal  cause  as  any  soldier  in 
the  field. 

The  war,  which  Mr.  Seward  had  prophesied  was  not 
to  last  over  sixty  days,  had  lasted  more  than  two  years, 
and  the  anti-slavery  section  of  the  supporters  of  the  Ad- 
ministration were  beginning  to  demand  that  the  Admin- 
istration strike  at  the  great  weakness  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy  by  adopting  a  policy  of  emancipation.  On 
the  17th  of  September,  1862,  five  days  before  the  Presi- 
dent issued  his  preliminary  emancipation  proclamation, 
I  gave  to  my  congregation  in  a  Sunday  evening  ser- 
mon —  and,  as  the  sermon  was  published  in  the  Terre 
Haute  "Express,"  to  the  people  of  the  city  —  the  rea- 
sons why  that  policy  should  be  adopted. 

Rebellion,  I  said,  is  not  always  infamous;  it  is  some- 
times glorious.  Whether  infamous  or  glorious  depends 
on  the  purpose  of  those  who  assail  the  Government. 
Most  rebellions  have  been  against  despotism  and  on  be- 
half of  liberty.  This  rebellion  is  against  liberty  and  on 
behalf  of  despotism.  Both  North  and  South  have  been 
filled  up  by  foreign  immigration;  the  North  by  immi- 
grants invited,  the  South  by  immigrants  captured  and 
enslaved.  The  North  has  given  her  laborers  free  lands, 
high  wages,  large  liberties;  the  South  has  denied  her 
laborers  all  liberty,  all  wages,  all  property  rights.    The 


216  REMINISCENCES 

inevitable  antagonism  between  these  two  systems  has 
passed  from  one  of  ideas  to  one  of  arms.  These  slaves 
have  been  made  to  add  strength  to  the  men  who  are 
jBghting  to  keep  them  slaves.  Over  three  millions  of 
laborers  in  the  South  remain  upon  the  farms  raising  food 
for  the  armies,  while  our  laborers  are  compelled  to  leave 
their  farms  untended.  The  time  has  come  to  turn  this 
weapon  of  the  enemy  against  himself  and  in  destroying 
slavery  destroy  the  cause  and  weaken  the  forces  of  the 
rebellion.  Nor  is  it  enough  merely  to  destroy  slavery. 
We  must  reconstruct  the  South  in  harmony  with  the 
principles  of  liberty  and  justice.  To  the  question,  What 
will  you  do  with  the  negro.?  Will  you  admit  him,  when 
emancipated,  to  a  position  of  political  equality.'*  I  an- 
swered, unhesitatingly,  "No!"  I  would  confine  the 
control  of  government  always  to  the  moral  and  the  in- 
telligent. For  generations  it  is  probable  that  the  African 
must  be  governed.  The  only  question  is.  Shall  he  be 
governed  selfishly  or  Christianly,  by  laws  which  disre- 
gard his  rights  or  by  laws  which  protect  them?  Slavery 
overthrown  and  the  slaveholding  aristocracy  of  the 
South  destroyed,  the  slaves  will  become  a  peasant  popu- 
lation; the  poor  whites,  set  free  from  their  political  servi- 
tude, will  become  in  time  industrious  and  intelligent 
citizens;  foreign  immigration  will  go  into  the  South  as  it 
has  gone  into  the  West;  and  out  of  these  elements  a  new 
and  genuine  democracy  will  be  created. 

Events  did  not  justify  the  prophecy  with  which  this 
sermon  closed.  The  governing  class  in  the  South,  fol- 
lowing the  guidance  of  their  great  leader,  Robert  E.  Lee, 
accepted  with  a  loyalty  unparalleled  in  history  the  re- 
sults of  the  war,  and  have  taken  the  lead  in  the  recon- 
struction of  the  South  on  a  basis  of  liberty  and  justice. 
The  opposition   to  liberty  and   justice  comes  to-day 


PASTOR  AND  PREACHER  217 

chiefly  from  representatives  of  the  poor  whites.  Their 
education  in  the  meaning  of  liberty,  their  inspiration 
with  the  spirit  of  Hberty,  is  to-day  the  greatest  need  of 
the  South,  if  not  of  the  Nation. 

I  had  by  the  fall  of  1862  such  evidence  of  the  confi- 
dence and  affection  of  my  people  that  I  was  justified  in 
believing  that  in  this  address  I  spoke  not  only  to  them, 
but  in  some  measure  at  least  for  them.  If  they  did  not 
heartily  indorse,  they  at  least  cordially  acquiesced  in, 
my  anti-slavery  utterances.  Nevertheless,  the  slavery 
question  and  some  other  questions  growing  out  of  the 
Civil  War  continued  to  present  one  of  the  two  chief  diffi- 
culties with  which  we  had  to  cope.  But  my  impression 
is  that  I  was  the  only  minister  in  Terre  Haute,  and  that 
the  Congregational  church  was  the  only  church  in  Terre 
Haute  which  recognized  the  existence  of  slavery.  This 
impression  is  confirmed  by  the  account  which  I  wrote 
to  my  wife,  on  the  28th  of  April,  1863,  of  the  Fast  Day 
Union  services :  — 

Terre  Haute,  Indiana,  April  28,  1863. 

Our  services  are  over.  The  church  was  full.  Extra  seats 
had  to  be  brought  in.  But  I  am  heartily  ashamed  to  say  it,  the 
word  slavery  or  slave  was  not  once  mentioned.  Isaiah  came 
the  nearest  to  preaching  "abolition."  Dr.  Jewett  read  the 
fifty-eighth  chapter.  I  am  ashamed,  yet  I  hardly  feel  blame- 
worthy. We  agreed  to  a  previously  arranged  assignment.  I 
was  to  open  with  the  truth  that  prayer  and  fasting  must  pro- 
duce repentance  and  reformation.  The  others  were  to  speak 
of  the  sins  of  which  we  must  repent.  .  .  .  My  address  perhaps 
referred  to  [slavery]  more  than  any  one  else's,  though  not  by 
name;  it  being  especially  agreed  that  I  should  make  no  refer- 
ence to  any  sins  by  name,  lest  I  should  tread  on  others' 
ground,  but  confine  myseK  to  the  general  principle.  .  .  . 

As  I  now  read  over  a  sketch  of  my  address  which  I 
sent  to  my  wife,  I  do  not  think  I  had  quite  as  much  rea- 


218  REMINISCENCES 

son  for  humiliation  as  I  then  thought  I  had.  It  is  true  I 
did  not  mention  slavery,  but  it  required  no  reading  be- 
tween the  lines  to  make  out  my  meaning.  Fasting  and 
prayer,  I  said,  will  not  save  the  country.  If  Pharaoh 
had  issued  a  proclamation  for  fasting  and  prayer  and 
had  still  refused  to  let  Israel  go,  God  would  not  have 
stayed  the  plagues.  Balak  sent  for  Balaam  to  curse  the 
Israelites  and  bless  him,  but  neither  blessing  nor  curse 
was  efficient.  Jefferson  Davis  had  appointed  numerous 
days  of  fasting  and  prayer,  but  their  Confederacy  is 
gasping  at  its  last  breath.  Our  Ship  of  State  has  rot- 
tenness at  its  keel;  through  the  leak  the  waters  pour.  If 
we  leave  the  hole  unmended  and  this  leak  unstopped, 
and  content  ourselves  with  scraping  and  holystoning 
the  decks,  wreck  and  ruin  will  be  the  result. 

I  did  not,  however,  believe  that  wreck  and  ruin  would 
be  the  result.  I  believed  that  we  should  learn  our  lesson, 
and  when  we  loved  liberty  enough  to  give  it  to  those 
whom  we  had  enslaved  the  end  of  the  war  would  come. 

I  wrote  my  wife:  "When  the  North  is  thoroughly 
abolitionized,  when  the  negro  has  fought  his  way  up  to 
respect,  then,  I  think,  our  war  will  be  over,  and  not  much 
before.  How  long  it  will  last  I  do  not  pretend  to  proph- 
esy. But  I  was  never  more  hopeful  of  the  final  result 
than  now.  When  God  has  held  us  in  the  fire  long  enough 
to  purge  out,  not  only  slavery,  but  the  intolerable  hate 
of  the  black  race  on  which  it  is  founded,  then  I  trust  to 
see  peace  restored  —  not  before." 

From  this  political  aspect  of  my  ministerial  work  dur- 
ing this  period  of  the  Civil  War  I  turn  to  its  more  per- 
sonal aspects. 

In  the  summer  my  wife's  only  brother  had  come 
West  to  make  his  home  with  us,  and  her  father, 
Hannibal  Hamlin,  a  cousin  of   the  Vice-President  of 


PASTOR  AND  PREACHER  219 

the  United  States  who  bore  the  same  name,  had  gone 
to  Washington,  where  he  obtained  a  position  in  one  of 
the  departments.  Our  hope  that  the  change  in  cHmate 
would  restore  her  father's  health  was  not  realized.  On 
November  15,  1862,  he  died,  surrounded  by  friends 
whom  his  amiable  disposition  and  his  unselfish  spirit 
had  attracted  to  him.  His  life  had  been  misplaced.  He 
was  a  man  of  fine  literary  taste  and  good  literary  judg- 
ment, and  was  a  natural  but  kindly  and  sympathetic 
critic.  With  a  literary  education,  he  would  have  ad- 
mirably filled  an  editorial  position  on  a  weekly  or 
monthly  publication.  But  he  was  not  fitted  for  a  busi- 
ness life  in  the  fierce  competition  of  his  time.  His  grave 
in  the  Congressional  Cemetery  near  Washington  bears 
the  simple  inscription :  — 

HANNIBAL  HAMLIN 

Waterford,  Maine 

January  30,  1809 
Washington,  D.  C. 
November  15,  1862 

Your  brother  and  companion  in  tribulation  and  in  the  kingdom 
and  patience  of  Jesus  Christ. 

In  April  following  her  father's  death  my  wife,  with 
the  two  children,  went  East  for  the  summer,  partly  to 
attend  to  the  papers  and  furniture  which  her  father  had 
left  in  Washington,  partly  to  visit  friends  and  get,  what 
she  greatly  needed,  so  much  of  a  vacation  as  is  possible 
to  a  mother  with  little  children  and  a  meager  purse. 
I  followed  her  in  July,  and  in  the  following  summer, 
1864, 1  went  on  a  trip  to  Lake  Superior  on  the  invitation 
of  friends  in  my  parish.  The  letters  written  to  me  by 
my  wife  in  the  summers  of  1863  and  1864  have  revived 
my  somewhat  faded  memories  of  the  events  and  incidents 
in  the  last  two  years  of  our  mid-Western  parish  life. 


220  REMINISCENCES 

History  does  not  and  cannot  report  the  forces  which 
exert  the  greatest  influence  on  the  life  of  the  community. 
They  are  unseen  and  unheard.  The  sun  has  a  far  greater 
power  than  the  tornado,  but  it  is  the  tornado  which  is 
headHned  in  the  newspapers.  They  report  the  wind,  the 
earthquake,  and  the  fire,  but  not  the  still,  small  voice. 
I  had  come  to  Terre  Haute  from  a  church  radiant  with 
the  warmth  and  the  light  of  a  revival  of  religion.  I 
wanted  a  similar  revival  in  my  church,  and  the  church 
seemed  to  me  dead.  I  wrote  to  my  wife  to  ask  Dr. 
Kirke  about  an  evangelist  who  had  worked  with  him  in 
revival  meetings.   He  replied,  "The  Lord  certainly  does 

bless  Mr. 's  labors,  but  I  could  never  see  why." 

That  stopped  my  quest  in  that  direction.  I  had  read  Dr. 
Finney's  Life  and  studied  his  Revival  Lectures,  and  I 
planned  on  our  return  from  the  East  in  1863  to  stop  at 
Oberlin  and  hear  him  preach  —  a  plan  which  I  carried  out. 
I  am  not  sure  that  his  quiet  conversational  method  did 
not  have  a  great  effect  on  my  own  public  style,  for  before 
that  visit  my  ideals  of  oratory  had  been  largely  derived 
from  Wendell  Phillips,  John  B.  Gough,  and  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  —  the  first  a  rhetorical  orator,  the  two 
latter  dramatic  orators.  I  think  it  was  Dr.  Finney  who 
demonstrated  to  me  that  one  could  be  an  effective 
speaker  without  being  either  rhetorical  or  dramatic. 

I  do  not  transfer  to  these  pages  any  of  the  expressions, 
in  my  letters  to  my  wife  in  1863,  of  my  discouragement 
at  the  lack  of  spiritual  life  in  the  church.  They  were  not 
groundless;  but  their  repetition  here  would  be  unjust  to 
the  church.  For  I  did  not  realize  then,  as  I  do  now,  that 
there  are  times  when  the  spirit  of  consecration  to  God's 
service  can  be  aroused  in  men,  leading  them  to  a  new 
life,  and  other  times  when  the  ministry  must  direct  into 
wise  ethical  channels  such  spirit  of  service  as  exists. 


PASTOR  AND  PREACHER  221 

however  imperfect  it  may  be.  Nor  did  I  realize  that  the 
kingdom  of  God  is  like  a  seed  growing  secretly,  and  that 
one  cannot  expect  a  harvest  until  the  seed  which  he  has 
planted  has  had  time  to  grow.  Two  years  after  I  left 
Terre  Haute  I  returned  to  it  on  a  visit,  to  find  the  church 
in  a  revival,  harvesting  seed,  some  of  which  I  had  sown. 
Looking  back,  I  am  glad  to  find  in  my  correspondence 
that  my  discouragement  deepened  and  strengthened  my 
spiritual  purpose.  "My  chief  motive,"  I  wrote  to  my 
wife  (May  9, 1863),  *'in  most  of  my  ministerial  work  thus 
far  has  been  human  love  —  a  desire  that  my  people,  my 
congregation,  should  be  better,  happier.  And  I  have 
preached  to  them  for  their  sakes,  not  for  Christ's.  I 
think  that  this  is  changing  now  with  me  —  a  little.  I  hope 
it  is  a  permanent  change.  I  begin  to  feel  that  I  am  not 
working  merely  for  my  people,  my  church,  my  friends; 
but  also  for  Christ.  It  has  given  me  a  new  impulse  in 
my  life." 

This  experience  wrought  another  and  a  permanent 
change  in  the  emphasis  which  I  began  to  put  on  the  life 
and  service  of  the  pastor.  "I  am  beginning  to  feel," 
I  wrote  my  wife,  "that  I  am  at  least  something  more  than 
a  preacher,  that  I  am  beginning  to  be  accepted  by  some 
of  my  people  as  their  pastor."  The  public  are  apt  to  re- 
gard the  minister's  sermons  as  his  most  important  work; 
he  sometimes  thinks  so  himself.  In  fact  his  most  import- 
ant service  is  that  of  counselor  and  personal  friend.  But 
of  this  service  there  is,  and  can  be,  no  report;  both  be- 
cause it  is  not  reportable  and  because  it  is  confidential. 
I  have  been  a  lawyer,  a  pastor,  an  executive,  an  author, 
and  a  journalist.  Of  all  these  professions  the  pastor's 
is  the  most  perplexing  and  the  most  illuminating,  the 
most  troubled  and  the  most  peaceful,  the  most  burden- 
some and  the  most  care-free,  the  most  sorrowful  and 


222  REMINISCENCES 

the  most  joyous.  The  true  pastor  fulfills  according  to 
the  measure  of  his  ability  the  prophecy  of  Isaiah.  He  is 
a  man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief.  He  bears 
the  griefs  and  carries  the  sorrows  of  his  people,  and  is 
wounded  by  their  transgressions  and  bruised  by  their  in- 
iquities. But  in  comforting  the  sorrowing  he  is  strength- 
ened, in  counseling  the  perplexed  he  is  illumined,  and 
there  is  no  joy  like  his  joy  when  he  succeeds  in  giving 
peace  to  the  troubled  and  succor  to  the  tempted.  The 
few  pastoral  experiences  here  narrated  may  serve  to  give 
the  reader  some  conception  of  this  hidden  life  of  the 
minister. 

A  young  man  of  a  lovable  nature,  a  devoted  husband, 
and,  I  believe,  a  sincere  Christian,  had  been  injured  in  a 
railway  wreck,  and  during  his  recovery  alcohol  was  pre- 
scribed for  him.  It  fastened  a  drink  habit  on  a  nature 
neither  physically  nor  morally  strong.  One  night,  when 
his  wife  had  left  town  for  a  week  on  a  visit  to  her  old 
home,  which  he  had  urged  her  to  make,  he  took  her 
photograph  out  of  the  album,  turned  its  face  inward, 
left  in  the  book  a  note  which  was  a  cry  of  defeat,  and  the 
next  morning  they  found  him  on  the  bed  with  an  empty 
pistol  by  his  side  and  a  bullet-hole  in  his  temple.  His 
membership  was  in  another  church,  but  he  was  in  my 
congregation.  I  was  absent  at  the  time.  In  the  funeral 
services,  conducted  in  the  Congregational  Church,  the 
choir  sang: — 

"How  blest  the  righteous  when  he  dies. 
When  sinks  the  weary  soul  to  rest." 

I  firmly  believe  that  no  attack  by  infidelity  does  to  the 
church  a  fraction  of  the  harm  which  it  does  to  itself  by 
such  unreality  in  its  religious  services.  When  I  reached 
home,  I  preached  a  temperance  sermon  to  young  men. 


PASTOR  AND  PREACHER  223 

with  this  death  as  my  text.  Remembering  him  who 
said  to  the  Pharisees  that  the  publicans  and  harlots 
should  go  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven  before  them, 
I  cannot  doubt  that  this  prisoner,  struggling  to  be 
free,  was  a  better  man  than  some  of  his  critics;  but 
this  made  the  lesson  of  his  tragic  death  all  the  more 
significant. 

Another  illustration  of  unreality  in  some  Christian 
teaching  was  furnished  by  the  sudden  death  of  a  young 
man,  the  only  son  of  his  widowed  mother.  While  bathing 
in  the  river  he  was  seized  with  cramp  and  sank  instantly, 
before  his  comrades  could  come  to  his  assistance.  He 
had  never  professed  faith  in  Christ.  His  mother  was  a 
member  of  the  Old  School  Presbyterian  Church;  some  of 
the  family  attended  the  Congregational  Church.  Thus 
both  pastors  called  on  her.  The  Old  School  Presbyterian 
pastor  assured  her  that  there  was  time  between  the 
attack  of  the  cramp  and  the  death  for  her  son  to  repent 
and  make  his  peace  with  God.  To  suggest  that  the 
heavenly  Father  would  make  the  eternal  destiny  of  a 
human  soul  depend  on  any  such  chance  as  that  seemed  to 
me  a  terrible  indictment  of  God's  justice.  I  simply  read 
to  the  bereaved  mother  some  passages  from  the  Psalms 
which  affirm  the  eternal  mercy  of  God,  and  then  in  prayer 
commended  both  her  and  her  son  to  her  Father's  keeping. 
Never  again  did  I  preach  or  hold  that  death  ends  hope 
for  any  of  God's  children,  though  it  took  me  some  years 
to  reconstruct  my  theology  respecting  the  future  state 
and  to  learn  that  there  is  as  little  ground  in  Scripture  as 
in  reason  for  the  doctrine  of  a  closed  door.  I  will  never 
teach  a  doctrine  in  the  pulpit  for  evangelistic  purposes 
which  I  am  not  willing  to  reaffirm  in  the  parlor  by  the 
side  of  a  mother  weeping  for  her  son. 


224  REMINISCENCES 

There  was  very  little  skepticism  in  Terre  Haute,  but 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  indifiference.  Shortly  after  my 
arrival  in  the  city  I  called  on  a  pew-holder  whose  family 
occupied  the  pew,  but  who  never  came  to  church  him- 
self. "I  wish  you  would  tell  me,"  I  said  to  him,  "your 
views  about  God,  duty,  a  future  life.  I  am  a  stranger 
here,  you  are  an  old  resident;  and  I  want  to  know  what 
such  men  as  you  think  on  these  subjects."  His  reply 
was:  "Sometimes  one  thing,  sometimes  another;  but,  on 
the  whole,  I  don't  think  much  about  them."  I  have 
since  been  inclined  to  believe  that  this  indifference  was 
not  greater  in  the  Middle  West  than  in  New  England; 
it  was  only  more  frankly  avowed.  The  New  Englander 
would  have  had  a  theoretical  answer  to  my  question. 
But  I  am  not  sure  that  a  purely  intellectual  curiosity  is 
spiritually  any  better  than  a  frankly  avowed  indifference. 

Twice  church  rules  seemed  to  me  to  stand  in  the  way 
of  spiritual  life,  and  each  time  I  set  the  rule  aside. 

Infant  baptism  is  regarded  in  the  Congregational 
churches  as  simply  a  consecration  to  God  of  the  child  by 
the  parent.  It  is  therefore  a  practical  though  unwritten 
canon  of  the  Congregational  churches  not  to  baptize  a 
child  unless  one  of  the  parents  is  a  member  of  some 
church.  A  Roman  Catholic  mother  in  the  town  sent  to 
me  one  night  asking  me  to  come  and  baptize  her  dying 
child.  Her  husband,  an  aggressive  disbeliever,  would  not 
allow  a  priest  in  the  house.  There  was  no  time  to  explain 
to  her  that  her  child  could  be  safely  intrusted  to  her 
heavenly  Father's  care.  Without  a  question  I  baptized 
the  still  breathing  though  unconscious  boy.  My  reward 
was  the  devoted  friendship  of  both  father  and  mother 
and  their  occasional  presence  in  my  congregation. 

Baptism  is  regarded  by  most  Congregationalists  as  a 


PASTOR  AND  PREACHER  225 

necessary  condition  of  membersliip  to  the  church,  though, 
unlike  the  Baptists,  they  allow  infant  children  to  be  ad- 
mitted to  citizenship  in  the  church  on  the  faith  of  their 
parents.  An  elderly  man,  born  and  brought  up  a 
Quaker,  wished  to  confess  his  faith  in  Christ,  but  he 
believed  neither  in  baptism  nor  in  the  Lord's  Supper. 
I  told  him  that  I  saw  no  good  reason  why  he  should  not 
be  admitted  without  baptism,  and,  if  he  wished,  I  would 
urge  that  view  upon  the  church.  But  it  would  certainly 
provoke  opposition  and  perhaps  serious  debate.  Bap- 
tism might  not  be  necessary;  I  thought  it  desirable,  but 
not  necessary;  but  certainly  it  could  do  no  harm.  I  ex- 
plained to  the  church  that  he  did  not  believe  in  water 
baptism,  but  was  willing  to  accept  it  out  of  regard  to  the 
belief  of  others;  the  members  of  the  church  were  satisfied 
with  this  concession,  and  he  was  admitted. 

The  most  intimate  and  sacred  experiences  of  the 
pastor  he  has  no  right  to  repeat.  But  one  such  experi- 
ence is  here  briefly  described  in  order  to  give  to  the  lay 
reader  a  hint  of  the  more  joyful  side  of  the  pastor's  life. 
One  Saturday  afternoon  I  had  a  long  conversation  with 
a  member  of  the  church  who  was  in  the  valley  of  the 
shadow  of  death.  She  doubted  whether  she  was  a  Chris- 
tian, and  all  the  future  seemed  gloomy  before  her.  I  wrote 
to  my  wife:  "I  told  her  to  direct  her  thoughts  to  Jesus, 
but  thought  I  had  failed.  And  I  felt  very,  very  sad.  At 
the  mission  Sunday-School  she  handed  me  a  little  note. 
And  after  I  left  I  opened  and  read  it.    It  was  this:  — 

"'I  came  to  Jesus  as  I  was, 
Weary  and  worn  and  sad. 
I  found  in  him  a  resting-place. 
And  he  has  made  me  glad.' 

I  do  not  know  that  I  was  ever  much  happier  than  I  was 
then  for  a  few  moments." 


226  REMINISCENCES 

A  church  of  Christ  should  never  be  satisfied  with  ren- 
dering service  only  to  the  families  which  support  it.  It 
should  minister  to  the  community.  Like  its  Master,  it 
comes  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to  minister.  The 
only  demand  it  should  make  on  the  community  is  the 
right  to  serve.  So  when  two  ladies,  one  a  Baptist,  the 
other  a  Congregationalist,  came  to  me  with  a  proposal  to 
start  a  mission  Sunday-School  in  the  town  for  the  boys 
and  girls  who  were  spending  Sunday  afternoons  on  the 
streets,  the  proposal  met  my  instant  and  enthusiastic 
support.  We  secured  for  Sunday  use  a  hall  employed  dur- 
ing the  week  as  an  armory.  We  extemporized  seats  out 
of  planks  stretched  across  empty  ammunition  boxes.  We 
adopted  the  name  given  to  us  by  the  boys  on  the  street, 
"The  Union  Rifles  Sunday-School."  There  were  three 
features  of  this  Simday-School  which  I  fancy  were  some- 
what original,  if  not  absolutely  unique. 

We  had  a  recruiting  officer.  A  young  man,  who  was 
enough  of  a  boy  to  understand  boys,  started  out  every 
Sunday  after  dinner,  picked  up  the  boys  he  found  play- 
ing marbles  or  loafing  on  the  street  corners,  and  brought 
them  into  the  school.  He  would  come  in  with  six  or  eight 
trailing  behind  him  and  then  start  out  for  another  group. 
On  him  we  depended,  and  not  in  vain,  to  fill  up  the  school, 
which  soon  reached  an  attendance  averaging  from  one 
hundred  to  one  hundred  and  fifty.  We  endeavored  to 
secure  punctuality  and  regularity  from  these  recruits  by 
a  plan  borrowed  from  other  Sunday-Schools.  We  gave 
to  every  scholar  who  was  in  his  seat  on  time  a  picture 
card;  for  every  ten  cards,  a  larger  picture  card;  and  for 
five  of  the  larger  picture  cards  —  that  is,  for  a  year's  at- 
tendance—  some  gift  was  proposed.  I  am  not  sure 
whether  it  was  ever  given,  for  when  our  recruiting  officer 
found  one  Sunday  afternoon  that  a  group  of  our  boys 


PASTOR  AND  PREACHER  227 

had  made  a  pool  of  their  cards  and  were  gambling  for 
the  pool  by  pitching  pennies  we  thought  it  best  to  dis- 
continue that  particular  form  of  "reward  of  merit." 

I  was  the  superintendent  of  the  Sunday-School,  but 
my  duties  were  confined  to  a  very  general  oversight  and 
the  conduct  of  the  platform  exercises.  A  Baptist  lady, 
who  was  a  teacher  in  the  high  school,  was  made  assistant 
superintendent.  During  the  sessions  of  the  school  she 
was  constantly  moving  in  and  out  among  the  classes, 
and  knew,  as  no  superintendent  could  who  saw  the  school 
only  from  the  platform,  who  of  the  teachers  were  doing 
efiPective  work  and  who  were  not.  A  woman  acting  as 
superintendent  of  a  Sunday-School  was,  I  think,  unusual 
at  that  time,  though  it  may  not  be  so  now. 

Perhaps  the  most  radical  peculiarity  of  the  school  was 
a  rule,  which  was  early  made,  that  any  teacher  who  was 
absent  two  Sundays  in  succession  without  previous  ex- 
planation would  lose  her  class.  By  this  means  we  weeded 
out  some  imsatisfactory  teachers  who  came  for  a  social 
time  and  only  when  they  felt  like  it;  and  the  standard 
which  we  thus  set,  and  the  independence  which  we  thus 
declared,  attracted  to  us  the  kind  of  teachers  that  we 
wanted.  I  am  still  of  the  opinion  that  the  Sunday-School 
which  goes  a-begging  for  either  teachers  or  scholars 
lowers  its  dignity  and  lessens  its  efficiency.  The  school 
was  still  in  existence  when  I  left  Terre  Haute,  and  out  of 
it  has  grown,  though  not  directly,  a  second  Congrega- 
tional church. 

The  preaching  of  a  minister  must  be  the  expression  of 
his  own  personal  experience.  He  must  be  the  truth  which 
he  utters.  "Let  us  prophesy,"  says  Paul,  "according  to 
the  proportion  of  our  faith."  With  the  change  in  my 
experience  heretofore  referred  to  came  a  change  in  my 


228  REMINISCENCES 

preaching.  It  was  more  vital,  more  spiritual.  If  the 
reader  asks  what  I  mean  by  "more  spiritual,"  I  reply,  it 
was  more  directly  addressed  to  reverence,  conscience, 
affections,  and  especially  hope.  Penologists  tell  us  that 
the  remedy  for  crime  is  not  the  deterrent  power  of  fear, 
but  the  inspiring  power  of  love  and  hope.  I  had  never 
endeavored  to  arouse  the  fears  of  my  congregation.  I 
held  in  very  small  estimation  either  the  virtue  or  the 
piety  which  is  inspired  by  fear.  But  I  had  addressed  the 
reason  and  endeavored  to  persuade  to  a  life  of  godliness 
because  it  is  a  reasonable  life.  I  now  began  to  put  before 
my  congregation  ideals  which  were  worth  attaining,  and 
to  inspire  in  them  the  hope  of  attainment. 

I  wrote  my  wife  in  May,  1863,  that  I  was  meditat- 
ing some  simple  Sabbath  evening  sermons  on  practical 
sins,  such  as  lying,  dishonesty,  etc.  On  my  return  from 
the  East  in  the  fall  of  1863  I  began  to  carry  out  this  plan. 
There  was  a  gentleman  whose  family  were  in  my  church 
and  who,  when  he  was  in  town,  was  quite  frequently  in 
my  congregation.  He  had  the  reputation  of  being  a 
professional  gambler.  In  conversation  with  him  I  got 
some  light  on  the  practices  of  the  professional  gamblers 
and  used  it  in  a  sermon  on  gambling.  Drinking,  gam- 
bling, and  attendant  vices  may  not  have  been  more  com- 
mon than  they  were  in  New  England,  but  they  were 
practiced  more  openly.  At  length,  at  a  masquerade  ball, 
the  openness  of  these  vices  shocked  the  moral  sense  of 
the  community.  It  is  rarely  of  use  to  rebuke  the  wrong- 
doer unless  conscience  can  be  aroused  to  indorse  the 
rebuke.  Only  self-condemnation  leads  to  repentance. 
I  thought  that  the  psychological  moment  had  arrived 
when  this  was  possible,  and  I  preached  a  sermon  on 
the  text,  "She  that  liveth  in  pleasure  is  dead  while  she 
liveth."   Of  the  character  of  this  sermon  the  reader  may 


PASTOR  AND  PREACHER  229 

judge  from  the  following  sentences  in  an  editorial  on  the 
sermon  in  the  Democratic  paper:  "His  word  pictures  of 
the  causes  of  initiation  of  young  men  in  the  three  great 
evils  of  gambling,  drinking,  and  licentiousness  were  in 
bold  relief  and  full  of  truthfulness,  and  it  is  hoped  may 
be  a  warning  to  young  men.  We  cannot  think,  however, 
that  the  extreme  plainness  of  statement  and  bluntness 
with  which  the  reverend  gentleman  depicted  some  things 
in  his  sermon  was  appropriate  on  the  occasion."  I  have 
no  copy  or  report  of  this  sermon,  and  therefore  I  cannot 
defend  it  from  this  criticism,  even  if  I  wished  to  do  so. 
But  I  may  take  the  occasion  to  say  that  when  such 
vices  are  treated  at  all  by  a  public  writer  or  speaker 
bluntness  is  desirable.  Veiled  allusions  only  pique  the 
curiosity  and  excite  vicious  imagination.  I  could  not 
take  seriously  the  naive  criticism  of  the  Democratic 
paper:  "We  have  serious  doubts  as  to  such  sermons  ac- 
complishing any  great  good.  To  live  up  to  the  reverend 
gentleman's  standard  the  whole  business  world  would 
have  to  be  revolutionized."  I  had  not  then,  and  have 
not  now,  any  objection  to  taking  part  in  an  endeavor 
to  revolutionize  the  spirit  and  methods  of  the  business 
world.  In  fact,  what  prompted  the  sermon  was  an  am- 
bition to  have  a  little  part  in  such  a  revolution. 

One  of  these  sermons  produced  a  considerable  sensa- 
tion in  the  city,  though  the  sensation  was  not  intended 
but  was  due  to  a  serious  blunder  on  my  part.  In  pre- 
paring these  sermons,  I  went,  not  to  my  books,  but  to 
my  friends  and  acquaintances,  for  illustrations.  One  of 
them  said,  "You  should  study  the  advertisements. 
How  does  a  merchant  who  advertises  'the  greatest  stock 
in  the  West'  know  that  he  has  the  greatest  stock?"  In 
my  sermon,  speaking  of  men  who  did  not  lie,  but  were 
not  always  careful  to  make  sure  that  they  were  speaking 


230  REMINISCENCES 

the  truth,  I  repeated  the  question  that  my  friend  had 
put  to  me.  I  felt  at  the  time  the  sensation  in  my  con- 
gregation. Coming  out  of  church,  a  friend  asked  me, 
"Do  you  know  who  advertises  'the  greatest  stock  of 
goods  in  the  West '  ? "  "No."  "  Your  friend  Mr.  Ryce." 
Pubhc  apology  was  impossible,  for  I  had  told  the  truth. 
I  could  only  say  to  him  that,  in  my  judgment,  a  minister 
has  no  right  to  be  personal  in  the  pulpit,  and  if  I  had 
known  the  facts  I  should  not  have  used  the  illustration. 
I  am  inclined,  however,  to  think  that  the  sermon  was 
effective,  in  spite  of,  or  perhaps  because  of,  my  blunder. 
For  next  week's  newspapers  published  such  advertise- 
ments as  are  reproduced  here. 

The  sermon  was,  quite  naturally,  criticised  very 
sharply  in  a  letter  by  Mr.  Ryce's  son,  who  was  his 
junior  partner.  To  that  criticism  I  made  no  reply,  and 
neither  the  sermon  nor  the  criticism  did  anything  to 
alienate  either  the  father  or  the  son  from  me.  That  it  did 
nothing  to  disturb  their  kindly  feeling  toward  me,  or 
the  kindly  feeling  of  the  church,  is  indicated  by  the 
generosity  of  the  church  extended  to  me  by  Mr.  Ryce,  as 
their  spokesman,  in  the  following  spring.  The  action  is 
here  best  described  by  a  few  sentences  from  an  article 
upon  the  incident  which  I  sent  to  the  Boston  "Congrega- 
tionalist":  — 

I  had  been  sick.  The  winter  had  been  an  unusually  hard 
one.  There  had  been  a  great  deal  of  sickness  and  several 
deaths  in  my  parish.  Among  these  last  were  some  of  my  best 
friends.  I  had  become  worn  down  by  the  hardest  kind  of  pas- 
toral visiting.  And  when  the  warm  weather  of  the  spring 
came  on,  it  brought  with  it  a  fit  of  sickness  —  my  first  in  my 
ministerial  experience.  It  was  nothing  serious,  however.  I 
was  soon  out  again,  and  had  resumed  once  more  my  usual 
duties.  But  I  could  not  perform  them  with  my  usual  anima- 
tion.   The  Sabbath,  which  I  had  always  welcomed,  I  began  to 


THE  DAILY  EXPRESS. 


TEHIiE-Ii-A.XJXE; 


THURSDAY, NOVEMBER  19,  1863. 

Another  Lie  I 

The  largest  stock  of  goods  in  the  United 
States  at  Tuell  &  Ripley's.  [19  dlt 


^^^  We  can  satisfy  any  one  that  we  do 
not  lie  when  we  say  that  we  have  just  receiv- 
ed the  largest  and  best  stock  of  perfumery, 
fancy  soaps,  &c.,  that  was  ever  brought  to 
this  place.  Try  us.  Also,  the  best  of  se- 
gars  and  tobacco. 

Nov.  19,  dlt       G.  W.  PATRICK  &  CO. 


"True  as  Preaching." 

For  the  best  assortment  of  gentlemen's 
Pins,  Sleeve  Buttons,  etc.,  in  Terre  Haute, 
go  to  Freeman's. 


A  Lie  I 

200,000  Balmoral  Skirts  at  Tuell  &  Ripley's. 
[19  dlt 


^=  The  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott,  of  Terre 
Haute,  is  "waking  things  up"  over  in  that 
little  city  by  preaching  against  "Lying  and 
Liars."  The  editorial  fraternity  are  partic- 
ularly exorcised.  The  reverend  gentleman 
having  once  been  an  editor  himself,  knows 
just  how  to  hit  'em,  —  Indianapolis  Journal. 


Ladies  and  Gentlemen  !  —  Bartlett  pre- 
sumes he  has  the  largest  stock  of  Pocket 
Books,  Portmonaies  and  Purses  in  this  city, 
consisting  of  Berlin-wires,  Kids  and  Moroc- 
cos, with  and  without  chains;  but  for  fear  it 
should  not  be,  advises  you  to  look  at  all  the 
other  stocks  first,  then  at  his. 


232  REMINISCENCES 

dread.  I  had  to  search  my  note-book  for  subjects  for  sermons. 
They  no  longer  came  flocking  to  me  unbidden.  .  .  .  My 
parishioners  wondered  I  did  not  call  as  I  used.  I  had  no  ex- 
cuse to  offer,  except  that  I  was  too  lazy.  My  doctor  told  me  I 
ought  to  go  away.  But  I  did  not  see  how  I  could  afford  to. 
I  labored  more  diligently  in  arithmetic  than  ever  in  my  school- 
days; but  no  figuring  would  bring  income  up  or  expenses  down. 
And  I  determined  to  fight  the  summer  through  as  well  as  I 
could  without  a  vacation.  .  .  .  Congregations  are  quick  to 
see  the  difference  between  creamy  and  skim-milk  sermons; 
and  mine  were  very  blue.  Yet  no  bevy  of  good  ladies  met  me 
with  reproaches  for  not  calling  oftener.  And  no  frank-spoken 
parishioner  asked  me  what  had  got  into  me  that  my  sermons 
were  so  dull  lately,  and  no  kind  friend  quietly  informed  me 
that  my  usefulness  was  at  an  end  and  I  had  better  resign.  With 
a  sagacity  unusual  in  Christian  congregations,  they  divined 
both  the  cause  and  the  cure  of  the  trouble.  When  a  horse,  over- 
worked, shows  signs  of  wear,  his  owner  neither  presses  him  to 
labor  beyond  his  powers  by  whip  and  spur,  nor  turns  him  out 
to  die,  nor  sells  him  at  a  sacrifice.  He  sends  him  to  pasture  to 
recruit.  My  people  resolved  to  send  me  to  pasture,  to  see  what 
a  three  weeks'  recruiting  might  do  for  me.  And  a  couple  of 
weeks  ago,  one  of  my  good  deacons  —  whom  may  God  bless, 
as  all  who  know  him  do  —  called  at  my  house  and  handed  me 
a  roll  of  bills,  $150,  in  greenbacks.  "Some  of  your  friends  in 
the  church  and  congregation  bid  me  hand  you  that,  Mr. 
Monk,"  said  he.  "  Go  off  and  recruit  with  it."  So  here  I  am  on 
the  waters  of  Lake  Superior,  following  the  advice  of  a  most 
excellent  recent  editorial  of  yours,  "A  Minister  at  Pasture." 

This  article  was  published  in  the  "Congregationalist" 
of  July  22, 1864.  In  the  February  following  I  resigned  my 
pastorate  and  left  Terre  Haute,  not  to  return  except 
upon  two  or  three  brief  visits.  What  led  me  to  resign  a 
pastorate  where  I  had  been  treated  with  such  kindness, 
to  bid  good-by  to  friends  who  had  proved  themselves  so 
friendly,  and  to  undertake  a  task  of  extreme  difficulty, 
and  what  that  undertaking  was  and  what  I  made  of  it, 
will  be  the  subject  of  my  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  XI 

reconstruction:  the  problem 

FOR  the  ten  years  preceding  the  Civil  War  a  slave 
insurrection  had  been  dreaded.  The  raid  of  John 
Brown  had  thrown,  not  the  State  of  Virginia  only, 
but  the  entire  Atlantic  slave  States,  into  a  panic.  The 
history  of  the  war  proved  this  dread  to  be  without  just 
cause.  The  negroes  remained  at  home  raising  the  crops 
while  their  masters  fought  in  the  field  to  keep  them  in 
slavery.  In  some  cases  this  patient  waiting  of  the  slaves 
may  have  been  due  to  a  habit  of  abject  submission  which 
they  had  not  the  will  power  to  break;  in  many  cases  it 
was  due  to  a  feeling  of  loyalty  by  the  slaves  toward  the 
masters  and  mistresses,  for  between  them  had  grown  up 
a  peculiar  feeling  of  attachment  which  the  North  has 
never  understood  —  loyalty  of  service  on  the  one  hand, 
loyalty  of  protection  on  the  other.  But  more  important 
than  either  was  the  religious  faith  of  the  negro  —  super- 
stitious, some  think  it;  rational,  I  think  it.  The  negro  is 
something  of  a  fatalist.  He  realized  that  the  problem 
in  which  he  found  himself  involved,  by  no  act  of  his,  was 
far  too  great  for  him  to  understand.  God  was  at  work, 
and  God  would  somehow  accomplish  his  redemption. 
He  could  do  nothing;  he  must  wait  and  see  the  salva- 
tion of  the  Lord. 

But  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  wrought  a  grad- 
ual change  in  his  feeling,  quickened  his  aspirations,  and 
in  hundreds  of  cases  became  a  call  to  action.  Even  before 


234  REMINISCENCES 

the  Proclamation,  negroes  had  flocked  from  their  plan- 
tations to  neighboring  camps  of  the  Federal  armies. 
Benjamin  F.  Butler,  with  characteristic  shrewdness,  con- 
fiscated them  as  contraband  of  war,  and  "contrabands'* 
they  became.  After  the  Emancipation  Proclamation, 
the  exodus  of  slaves  increased,  and  their  title  was  changed 
to  "freedmen."  Thus  gradually  in  all  the  Southern 
territory  permanently  occupied  by  the  Federal  authority 
there  grew  up  camps  of  negroes,  many  of  them  almost 
as  helpless  as  a  lost  dog  without  his  master.  A  race  does 
not  easily  and  quietly  pass  from  a  habit  of  dependence 
and  submission  into  a  habit  of  self-support  and  self- 
control. 

With  these  negroes,  companions  only  in  their  mis- 
fortunes, were  camps  of  white  men  and  women  fleeing 
from  the  South.  Some  of  them  were  Unionists.  A 
Northern  man,  realizing  the  contempt  with  which  the 
victorious  section  regarded  the  "Copperhead,"  should 
have  been  able  to  imagine  the  hatred  felt  in  the  de- 
feated South  for  the  Unionist.  But  the  motto  "Put 
yourself  in  his  place"  requires  more  imagination  than 
most  men  possess.  Nor  was  it  only  Union  men  that  fled 
to  the  territory  protected  by  Northern  armies.  Seces- 
sionists, deprived  of  home  and  industry  by  the  devastat- 
ing progress  of  the  war,  fled  for  safety  and  support  to 
the  regions  where  war  was  not.  And  with  them  were 
many  poor  whites,  who  understood  the  causes  and  nature 
of  the  war  even  less  than  the  negroes  whom  they  despised. 
Said  a  Confederate  prisoner  who  had  been  drafted  into 
the  Southern  service  to  a  friend  of  mine,  "What  did 
you-uns  come  down  to  fight  we-uns  for?"  What  answer 
could  be  given  to  such  a  question  with  any  hope  that  it 
would  be  understood? 

What  to  do  with  these  helpless  colored  "freedmen" 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM         235 

and  white  "refugees"  became  the  perplexing  problem 
of  every  division  commander  as  fast  as  his  territory  was 
cleared  of  Confederate  forces.  Rations  could  be,  and 
were,  provided  out  of  the  army's  stores.  Shelter  was  pro- 
vided where  possible  out  of  army  barracks  or  abandoned 
school-houses  and  churches.  Here  and  there  some  fitful 
work  was  provided  and  some  semblance  of  schooling. 
But  to  organize  either  an  industrial  or  an  educational 
system  was  beyond  the  power  of  local  authorities.  That 
this  must  be  done  for  all  the  territories  which  had  been 
devastated  by  the  war  gradually  became  apparent  to 
the  people  of  the  North.  It  constituted  the  perplexing 
problem  of  Reconstruction. 

It  is  easy,  looking  back,  to  see  that  the  men  of  that 
generation  blundered  egregiously,  and  brought  upon  the 
country,  especially  the  South,  and  most  of  all  upon  the 
negro  race,  tragic  disaster  by  their  blundering.  But  it  is 
not  so  easy,  even  in  the  light  of  that  experience,  to  see 
what  they  should  have  done.  To  build  in  a  generation 
a  new  democratic  civihzation  on  the  ruins  of  a  feudalism 
overthrown,  with  only  the  impoverished  lands  and  the 
ignorant  serfs  as  material,  is  a  problem  almost  impossible 
of  achievement. 

Who  was  to  undertake  this  work  of  reconstruction.'* 
Was  it  an  executive  function  to  be  exercised  by  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  .^^  Was  he  to  determine  by  his 
authority,  as  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  United  States, 
in  what  sections  martial  law  might  be  abandoned  and 
civil  law  reestabhshed,  and,  by  his  pardoning  power, 
who  of  those  lately  in  arms  against  the  United  States 
might  resume  the  rights  and  prerogatives  of  citizenship.'^ 
Or  was  the  work  of  reconstruction  a  Congressional  func- 
tion, and  was  Congress  to  determine,  as  it  would  in  the 
case  of  conquered  territory,  on  what  terms  the  States 


236  REMINISCENCES 

might  come  back  into  the  Union  from  which  they  had 
attempted  to  secede? 

What  should  be  done  with  the  negroes?  The  Eman- 
cipation Proclamation  had  relieved  them  from  all  duty 
of  service  to  their  masters;  but  it  had  also  relieved  the 
masters  from  all  duty  of  providing  for  and  protecting 
their  slaves.  By  a  stroke  of  the  pen  four  million  slaves 
had  been  transformed  into  four  million  vagrants  and 
paupers.  Under  the  existing  laws  of  the  various  States 
they  could  not  own  a  rod  of  land,  or  a  house,  or  personal 
property  of  any  description.  They  did  not  legally  own 
the  clothes  they  wore  or  the  shacks  they  might  have 
constructed.  They  could  not  vote,  nor  hold  office,  nor 
sit  on  juries,  nor  testify  in  court,  nor  practice  as  lawyers 
or  as  physicians.  They  were  not  legally  married,  and 
their  children  were  not  legitimate  nor  legally  subject  to 
parental  authority. 

Who  should  solve  this  problem?  The  States?  Surely, 
said  the  South;  in  the  State  the  negro  must  live,  in  the 
State  ply  his  industry;  there  he  would  be  surrounded  by 
his  old  masters,  who  had  been  his  caretakers,  understood 
his  character,  knew  how  to  deal  with  him,  and  felt  a 
real  affection  for  him.  Surely  not,  replied  the  North.  To 
hand  him  over  to  the  States  was  to  hand  him  over  to  the 
very  community  which  for  four  years  had  been  fighting 
a  bloody  war  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  enslave  him. 
What  they  would  do  with  him  if  they  had  the  power  was 
apparent  from  what  in  some  States  they  had  attempted 
to  do.  It  is  not  strange  that  Southern  men,  who  had 
never  seen  the  negro  work  except  under  compulsion, 
thought  he  never  would  work  except  under  compulsion, 
and  for  the  authority  of  the  master  over  the  slave  he 
owned  attempted  to  substitute,  in  a  system  of  serfdom, 
the  authority  of  the  State  exercised  through  their  late 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM         237 

masters  over  the  freedmen.  Should  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment undertake  the  care  of  the  negro?  That  meant 
that  Congress  should  undertake  it.  And  Congress  was 
composed  almost  exclusively  of  Northern  men,  who  did 
not  understand  the  negro,  never  had  lived  among  the 
negroes,  had  no  real  affection  for  the  negro,  and  could 
not  understand  his  temperament,  his  ignorance,  his 
superstition,  his  shiftless  habits,  his  animal  passions,  his 
disregard  of  property  rights.  Grant  that  these  charac- 
teristics were  relics  of  slavery;  still,  it  would  require 
time,  patience,  and  intimacy  of  acquaintance  to  eman- 
cipate him  from  them.  If,  then,  neither  the  State  nor 
the  Nation  could  be  trusted  to  take  care  of  the  negro, 
why  not  trust  him  to  take  care  of  himself.''  Enfranchise 
him;  give  him  the  ballot,  and  with  it  all  the  rights  and 
privileges  and  prerogatives  of  citizenship.  Apply  the 
principle  of  the  Homestead  Act.  Use  the  abandoned 
lands  in  the  South,  and,  if  necessary,  confiscate  the  lands 
of  the  rebels,  and  give  each  negro  a  lot  for  cultivation  — 
forty  acres  was  proposed.  What  if  the  South  objected 
to  negro  suffrage.''  It  would  be  a  just  punishment.  But 
the  South  would  not  long  object.  In  a  few  years  —  five 
at  the  most,  said  Charles  Sumner  —  the  South  would 
conquer  its  prejudice  sufficiently  to  allow  the  late  slaves 
to  be  their  equals  at  the  polls.  Sumner  was  better  ac- 
quainted with  political  theories  than  with  human  nature. 
This,  however,  was  the  course  finally  adopted.  The 
political  power  in  the  reconstructed  States  was  given  to 
all  loyal  citizens,  white  or  black,  ignorant  or  educated. 
The  results  proved  that  the  ballot  in  the  hands  of  ig- 
norance is  as  effective  an  instrument  for  self-destruction 
as  for  self -protection.  I  agree  with  Professor  Burgess 
that  "it  was  a  great  wrong  to  civilization  to  put  the 
white  man  of  the  South  under  the  domination  of  the 


238  REMINISCENCES 

negro  race."^     But  the   alternative  propositions   were 
also  full  of  peril. 

The  reader  must  not  think  that  these  theories  were 
as  clearly  defined  as  I  have  defined  them  here.  Public 
opinion  at  the  North  was  a  swirl  of  contradictory  opin- 
ions. Members  of  the  same  political  party  held  opposite 
opinions,  and  the  same  man  often  held  half  a  dozen 
opinions  in  as  many  weeks.  Andrew  Johnson,  who  as 
President  became  a  bitter  opponent  of  negro  suffrage, 
was  reported  on  May  12,  1865,  as  in  favor  of  it.  Charles 
Sumner,  of  Massachusetts,  was  an  ardent  advocate  of 
negro  suffrage;  Governor  Andrew,  of  the  same  State,  op- 
posed it.  It  was  a  time  of  chaos.  There  was  nothing  in 
the  written  Constitution  or  in  the  traditions  of  the 
Nation  to  govern,  and  little  in  either  to  guide.  History 
furnished  no  precedents.  Except  to  the  doctrinaire,  there 
was  no  great  political  or  moral  principle  on  which  the 
voter  could  take  his  stand,  sure  that  it  was  right,  and 
therefore  sure  that  it  was  wise.  Probably  an  overwhelm- 
ing majority  of  the  people  of  the  North  gave  little  thought 
to  the  problem.  The  tense  emotion  aroused  by  the  war 
was  followed  by  a  reaction.  The  war  had  succeeded,  the 
Union  was  saved,  slavery  was  abolished;  why  worry. 5* 

^  Reconstruction  and  the  Constitution,  by  John  W.  Burgess,  p.  133.  Mr. 
James  Ford  Rhodes,  in  his  History  of  the  United  States,  agrees  with  Professor 
Burgess  and  gives  in  considerable  detail  the  facts  which  he  thinks  justify  this 
conclusion.  I  quote  from  his  history  here  only  two  or  three  sentences.  "  No 
such  mass  of  political  inexperience,  of  childish  ignorance,  —  no  such  '  terrible 
inert  mass  of  domesticated  barbarism '  was  ever  before  in  our  coimtry  called 
upon  to  exercise  the  suffrage.  In  five  of  the  States,  South  Carolina,  Florida, 
Alabama,  Mississippi  and  Louisiana,  the  negroes  outnumbered  the  whites; 
in  Georgia  the  races  were  almost  even;  in  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Texas  and 
Arkansas  the  white  voters  were  in  the  majority.  Over  700,000  negroes,  most 
of  whom  only  three  years  before  had  been  slaves,  were  given  the  right  to  vote." 
The  number  of  white  men  disfranchised  as  estimated  at  the  time  was  not  very 
great,  but  "the  highest  social  class  —  the  men  of  brains,  character  and  expe- 
rience —  were  disfranchised  while  the  lowest  of  the  low  were  given  a  vote. 
Of  the  whites,  considered  apart,  the  illiterate  were  admitted,  the  intelli- 
gent excluded."     (Vol.  vi,  pp.  82-83.) 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM         239 

This  brief  summary  of  conditions  is  necessary  to  make 
clear  to  the  reader  the  nature  and  reasons  of  the  change 
in  my  work  which  this  chapter  is  to  describe. 

The  October  number  of  the  "New  Englander,"  a 
monthly  review  published  at  New  Haven,  contained  an 
article  from  my  pen  on  reconstruction.  Published  a 
month  before  the  Presidential  election  of  1864,  it  has  his- 
torical significance  only  as  it  indicates  the  spirit  of  the 
dominant  section  of  the  Republican  party;  it  has  per- 
sonal significance  because  it  led  to  a  change  in  my  life 
as  great  as  that  made  five  years  before  when  I  left  the 
law  for  the  ministry.  This  justifies,  if  it  does  not  neces- 
sitate, giving  here  a  fairly  full  abstract  of  this  essay. 
I  wrote: — 

At  the  commencement  of  this  war  we  were  often  sneeringly 
asked  the  question,  Suppose  you  conquer  the  South,  what  are 
you  going  to  do  with  it.?*  This  question,  impertinent  then,  has 
now  become  pertinent.  A  considerable  part  of  the  South  is 
conquered.  The  Federal  flag  floats  in  triumph  over  the  prin- 
cipal parts  of  Missouri,  Arkansas,  Tennessee,  and  Louisiana. 
What  are  we  going  to  do  with  the  conquered  territory? 

To  conquer  alone  is  not  enough.  It  is  impossible  to  make 
the  President  a  permanent  autocrat  of  the  subjugated  terri- 
tory. Where  the  Confederate  authority  has  been  destroyed 
the  Federal  authority  must  be  restored  in  its  legitimate  and 
constitutional  forms.  Destruction  must  be  followed  by  re- 
construction. Unless  liberty  is  framed  into  permanent  insti- 
tutions the  victory  of  liberty  is  vain.  .  .  . 

Victory  in  battle  is  simply  preparation  for  the  Nation's  work. 
We  must  occupy  the  South  not  only  by  bayonets  but  also  by 
ideas.  We  must  not  only  destroy  slavery,  we  must  also  organ- 
ize freedom. 

Two  conditions  are  absolutely  essential  to  the  perpetuity  of 
the  Republic:  popular  intelligence  and  popular  morality. 
Hence  two  institutions  are  essential:  common  schools  and 
christian  churches.  "Free  institutions  without  general  intel- 
ligence can  exist  only  in  name.    There  is  no  despotism  so  cruel 


240  REMINISCENCES 

and  remorseless  as  that  of  an  unreasonable  mob.  Men  who 
do  not  know  how  to  govern  themselves  cannot  know  how  to 
govern  a  great  country.  The  ignorance  of  the  masses  and  the 
consequent  political  power  of  the  few  made  this  rebellion  pos- 
sible. The  power  has  been  taken  from  the  few,  it  remains  to 
give  knowledge  to  the  masses.  But  knowledge  alone  is  not 
enough.  For  while  intelligence  tends  to  make  men  free,  it  does 
not  suffice  to  constitute  a  free  State.  And  it  is  not  enough  to 
emancipate  individuals  from  iniquitous  thraldom.  That  lib- 
erty may  be  permanent,  it  must  be  organic.  Heads,  legs,  arms, 
trunks,  gathered  in  an  indiscriminate  pile,  cannot  make  a  man. 
They  must  be  united  by  sinews  and  ligaments,  inspired  with 
life,  and  governed  by  one  dominant  head.  So  a  mass  of  indi- 
viduals, however  free,  gathered  together  do  not  constitute  a 
free  Republic.  Individualism  is  the  characteristic  of  simple 
barbarism,  not  of  republican  civilization." 

How  to  harmonize  individual  liberty  with  the  cohesion 
necessary  to  secure  the  preservation  of  the  State  is  the  problem 
of  republicanism.  To  solve  this  problem,  to  constitute  a  free 
State,  three  conditions  are  necessary:  Its  citizens  must  love 
liberty  for  themselves.  They  must  know  how  to  submit;  for 
reasonable  subordination  is  essential  to  organized  liberty. 
And  they  must  know  how  to  cooperate  with  others;  for  fra- 
ternity is  as  essential  to  free  institutions  as  liberty  and  equal- 
ity. Thus  to  constitute  permanently  a  free  State  men  must 
be  taught  not  only  their  rights  but  also  their  duties.  To  estab- 
lish liberty  it  is  not  enough  to  strike  astmder  with  the  sword 
the  chains  which  bind  men;  they  must  be  bound  together  by 
the  bonds  of  duty  and  of  affection.  Thus  the  principles  of  re- 
ligion underlie  republicanism.  Religion  teaches  man  that  he  is 
a  son  of  God,  and  thus  makes  him  unwilling  to  be  the  slave  of 
man;  teaches  him  submission  to  the  authority  of  God,  and 
so  renders  submission  to  his  earthly  superior  more  easy  for 
him;  inspires  him  with  affection  for  his  fellowmen,  and  so 
makes  cooperation  with  them  in  government  possible. 

History  attests  the  truths  of  this  principle.  Religious  lib- 
erty has  preceded  civil  liberty.  To  establish  the  safety  of  the 
Republic  in  the  South  we  must  organize  in  the  South  free 
schools  and  free  churches.  The  South  now  possesses  neither. 
In  colonial  days  the  Governor  of  Connecticut,  in  answer  to 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM         241 

questions  of  the  English  Government,  reported  that  one  fourth 
of  her  income  was  expended  in  pubHc  schools.  The  Governor 
of  Virginia  replied :  "  I  thank  God  that  there  are  no  free  schools 
nor  printing,  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have  them  these  hun- 
dred years."  As  a  result,  in  1860  three  fourths  of  the  children 
of  Connecticut  were  attending  public  schools,  while  nine  tenths 
of  the  children  of  Virginia  were  growing  up  in  ignorance.  The 
census  does  not  show  the  same  disparity  in  the  number  of  the 
churches,  for  the  negroes  are  naturally  religious.  But  statis- 
tics of  church  property  show  that  Connecticut,  with  less  than 
half  the  population  of  Virginia,  has  invested  in  churches  nearly 
three  quarters  of  a  million  more.  Moreover,  in  many  Southern 
communities  churches  flourishing  before  the  war  exist  no 
longer.  Church  organizations  are  disbanded,  congregations 
are  scattered,  church  edifices  are  closed  or  temporarily  con- 
verted into  hospitals,  barracks,  and  negro  schools. 

Three  elements  of  population  in  this  territory  call  for  aid 
from  the  North.  An  immense  negro  population  without  edu- 
cation cannot  know  how  to  use  freedom.  The  poor  whites  must 
have  free  schools  and  a  free  Gospel,  or  the  political  liberty 
which  they  have  received  will  prove  only  less  disastrous  than 
has  their  political  servitude.  "  To  give  political  power  to  the 
ignorant,  without  also  affording  them  education,  is  to  put  the 
helm  of  the  ship  of  state  in  the  hands  of  those  who  will  surely 
run  it  on  the  rocks."  Northern  immigrants  will  stand  in  no 
less  need  of  educational  and  religious  institutions.  "We  have 
need  to  beware  lest  the  devil,  having  been  cast  out  of  the 
South,  and  the  territory  been  swept  and  garnished,  he  go  and 
get  seven  other  devils  and  return,  and  the  last  state  of  that 
country  prove  worse  than  the  first." 

"While  society  is  fermenting,  and  institutions  are  being 
established,  and  public  opinion  is  forming,  and  government  is 
in  process  of  organization,  is  the  time  to  impress  upon  this  new 
organization  its  permanent  character.  While  nature  was  in 
chaos  God  fashioned  and  formed  it  as  it  is.  While  the  metal  is 
molten  is  the  time  to  stamp  and  mold  it."  The  free  polity  of 
the  Congregationalists  affords  some  peculiar  advantages  for 
this  work.  For,  while  the  South  would  give  but  a  surly  wel- 
come to  Yankee  missionaries  coming  with  advertised  purpose 
to  plant  Yankee  churches,  it  will  not  refuse  the  assistance  of 


242  REMINISCENCES 

Northern  capital,  and  even  of  Northern  ministers  who  shall 
proffer  to  the  people  aid  in  organizing  their  own  churches 
upon  the  broad  and  catholic  basis  of  a  common  evangelical 
faith. 

I  have  given  this  essay  at  some  length  because  it 
states  not  only  the  principles  upon  which,  and  the  spirit 
in  which,  I  believed  the  work  of  Reconstruction  should 
be  undertaken  and  carried  on,  but  not  less  the  principles 
and  the  spirit  which  I  still  believe  are  essential  to  all 
political  and  social  reform.  Two  of  these  principles  I 
restate,  because  they  are  as  applicable  to  the  problems 
of  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  as  to  those  of 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century:  — 

Men  who  do  not  know  how  to  govern  tJ\emselves  cannot  know 
how  to  govern  a  great  country. 

Individualism  is  the  characteristic  of  simple  barbarism,  not 
of  republican  civilization. 

The  first  principle  should  determine  the  conditions 
of  suffrage  both  in  America  and  in  her  dependencies. 
The  second  principle  should  determine  the  purpose  and 
direction  of  all  social  reform. 

Four  months  before  this  essay  was  published,  and  prob- 
ably one  or  two  months  before  it  was  written,  two  Con- 
gregational clergymen,  Dr.  Joseph  P.  Thompson,  of  New 
York,  and  Dr.  William  I.  Budington,  of  Brooklyn,  had 
visited  Tennessee  as  delegates  of  the  Christian  Com- 
mission. Impressed  by  the  desolate  condition  of  the 
country,  they  had  returned  to  the  East  and  organized  a 
Union  Commission  to  cooperate  with  the  Government 
in  the  work  of  reconstruction,  as  the  Christian  Com- 
mission and  the  Sanitary  Commission  had  been  organized 
to  cooperate  with  the  army  in  the  prosecution  of  the 
war.     This  Union  Commission  at  once  began  its  philan- 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM         243 

thropic  work,  which  at  first  consisted  chiefly  in  providing 
for  the  immediate  physical  necessities  of  the  homeless 
and  starving  freedmen  and  refugees.  By  January,  1865, 
the  work  had  grown  to  such  dimensions  as  to  require  a 
paid  executive  head,  and  the  support  furnished  to  it  by 
the  philanthropic  citizens  of  the  North  was  such  as  to 
justify  the  appointment  of  one.  On  the  1st  of  February 
my  brother  Austin  wrote  me  from  New  York  telling  me 
of  this  Commission  and  sounding  me  as  to  my  willing- 
ness to  accept  an  election.  Partly  to  become  acquainted 
with  the  Commission  and  its  work,  partly  to  attend  the 
wedding  of  my  younger  brother,  Edward,  which  was  to 
take  place  on  the  14th  of  that  month,  I  went  to  New 
York.  On  my  arrival  there  I  found  that  the  Commission 
had  already  elected  me  its  Corresponding  Secretary. 

The  reader  may  remember  that  in  1857-58  I  had  hesi- 
tated between  entering  the  ministry  and  entering  public 
life.  I  wished  to  have  some  part  in  dealing  with  the  moral 
problems  which  confronted  the  country,  and  either  min- 
istry or  politics  afforded  a  better  opportunity  for  dealing 
with  them  than  the  law.  This  invitation  to  become  the 
administrative  head  of  the  American  Union  Commission 
seemed  to  me  to  offer  a  rare  opportunity  to  take  some 
part  both  in  an  individual  and  a  social  gospel.  It  ap- 
pealed to  my  imagination  and  to  my  ambition.  I  found 
it  also  appealed  to  the  soberer  judgment  of  both  of  my 
older  brothers  and  of  my  father.  The  work  could  not 
be  left  to  go  on  undirected  while  I  waited.  After  a  week's 
delay  I  accepted  the  call  and  went  back  to  Terre  Haute 
to  hand  in  my  resignation  and  prepare  to  return  to  the 
East.  If  I  had  not  done  so,  I  doubt  whether  I  should 
have  had  the  courage  to  resign.  For  when  the  resignation 
came,  Mr.  Ryce  told  me  that,  if  I  would  reconsider  the 
question,  he  would  ring  the  court-house  bell  and  call 


244  REMINISCENCES 

a  town  meeting  to  protest  against  my  going.  And  I  do 
not  doubt  that  he  would  have  done  so. 

On  Sunday  morning,  February  27,  I  announced  my 
resignation  to  my  congregation  and  stated  the  reasons 
which  led  to  it,  but  postponed  a  farewell  sermon  until 
a  later  date.  For  it  was  desirable  for  me  to  know  directly 
the  field  in  which  I  was  to  work  and  to  see  something  of 
the  people  to  whom  my  service  was  to  be  rendered. 
Except  for  my  trip  to  Georgia  in  1856  and  one  brief  trip 
to  Kentucky  to  present  a  National  flag  to  a  Federal  regi- 
ment, I  had  never  visited  the  South.  Therefore,  before 
leaving  for  the  East  to  take  up  my  new  work,  I  made  a 
flying  visit  to  Tennessee.  What  I  saw  there  I  can  best 
tell  my  readers  by  quotations  from  letters  which  I  sent 
almost  daily  to  my  wife:  — 

Nashville,  Tennessee,  29  March,  1865.  Wednesday  mom. 
In  order  to  go  to  Nashville  one  must  have  a  pass.  And  in 
order  to  put  travelers  to  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  in- 
convenience they  do  not  allow  them  to  be  granted  in  Louisville. 
We  must  telegraph  to  Nashville,  and  wait  for  a  reply  before 
we  can  leave.  But  W has  already  secured  a  pass  by  tele- 
graph from  Cincinnati.  He  bids  us  good-by  and  starts  away 
in  the  seven  o'clock  morning  train.     We  are  to  meet  at  the 

Commercial  House,  in  Nashville.     W has  with  him  a 

Miss  B ,  a  teacher.    We  all  go  in  to  breakfast  together. 

Then  for  the  telegraph  office.  A  placard  hung  against  the 
glass  door  says  "Office  closed."  A  young  man  sits  tantaliz- 
ingly  near  the  window.  In  answer  to  om  inquiries  he  calls 
through  the  window  that  the  office  does  not  open  till  eight 
o'clock.  ...  I  hunt  up  the  Sanitary  Store  rooms.  Nobody 
there  but  a  burly  Irishman  sweeping  out.    Clerk  will  be  down 

about  eight  o'clock.  He  can  tell  me  where  to  find  Mr.  H . 

Back  to  telegraph  office,  where  I  wait  till  half -past  eight;  no 

W appears.  Then  I  send  my  request  for  a  pass,  receiving 

from  the  clerk  the  cheering  intelligence  that  it  is  doubtful 
whether  I  can  get  a  reply  in  time  for  to-day's  train,  which 
leaves  at  one  o'clock.    Probably  must  spend  the  night  on  ex- 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM         245 

pense  at  Louisville,  and  travel  all  the  precious  hours  of  Wednes- 
day.   Humbug!    However,  no  help  for  it.    Back  to  Sanitary 

rooms,  and  thence  to  Rev.  Mr.  H 's,  who  receives  me 

cordially,  and  after  half  an  hour's  talk  proposes  adjournment 
to  military  headquarters,  where  he  is  to  meet  some  of  the 
gentlemen  of  his  commission.  This  is  a  Louisville  Refugee 
Commission.     It  is  not  directly  connected  with  ours,  though 

I  hope  it  will  become  so.    Mr.  H ,  its  President,  is  the 

Unitarian  clergyman  of  the  city. 

We  go  up  to  General  Palmer's  headquarters,  who  is  in  com- 
mand of  Kentucky.  Arrangements  are  in  progress  by  which 
Government  builds  a  home  for  the  refugees,  which  is  placed 
under  the  care  of  this  Commission.  I  am  introduced  to  Gen- 
eral Palmer;  at  the  close  of  the  interview  tell  him  my  business 
and  ask  if  in  any  way  I  can  get  to  Nashville  without  waiting 
for  a  pass.  He  replies  that  he  has  no  strict  authority  to  grant 
them,  but  does  sometimes  in  special  cases;   and  gives  me  one. 

So  I  am  all  right.    Through  Mr.  H and  Mr.  T , 

chief  clerk  of  Sanitary  Commission,  whom  I  find  to  be  an  old 
Brooklyn  friend  of  mine,  I  get  a  free  pass  on  the  railroad,  bid 
Louisville  friends  good-by,  and  make  my  way  to  the  depot. 

There  are  soldiers  at  every  door  of  every  car.  I  must  carry 
my  bag  to  the  baggage  car  to  be  marked,  examined  if  they 
please,  and  I  must  show  my  railroad  military  pass  before  I  can 
enter.  Soldier  scrutinizes  military  pass,  doubts  it,  and  hands  it 
to  a  lieutenant,  in  uniform,  standing  near.  This  is  the  mili- 
tary conductor.  Every  train  has  its  military  conductor,  in 
command  of  the  guard,  one  of  whose  duties  it  is  to  pass  through 
the  train  and  take  up  military  passes,  and  put  out  those  who 
have  none.  It  won't  do,  he  says.  He  is  very  short,  as  military 
men  are  wont  to  be.  I  argue.  No  use.  Yes,  it  is  some  use. 
"You  can  telegraph,"  says  he,  "for  a  pass  and  ask  them  to  send 
it  to  Bowling  Green.  If  it  comes,  all  right.  If  not,  you  will 
have  to  get  off.  You  cannot  go  into  Tennessee  on  that  pass." 
Very  good.  Will  he  telegraph  for  me?  Yes,  he  will.  There  is 
no  time  now.  But  he  will  telegraph  from  the  first  station. 
So  I  get  into  the  car,  in  some  disagreeable  uncertainty  whether 
I  am  going  to  Nashville  on  business,  or  to  Bowling  Green,  Ken- 
tucky, on  a  pleasure  trip.  I  succeed,  however,  in  sedulously 
cultivating  the  gentleman's  acquaintance.    He  becomes  more 


246  REMINISCENCES 

amicable.  We  sit  together  for  some  time  on  the  train.  He 
sends  the  telegram.  And  when  we  get  out  to  supper  at  Cave 
City  (a  magnificent  metropolis  of  half  a  score  of  houses  and 
four  or  five  score  of  people,  taking  its  name  from  its  proxim- 
ity to  Mammoth  Cave)  he  brings  me  the  reply  —  a  pass  in 
due  form.  Total  expense  of  telegraphic  operations,  all  told, 
at  Louisville  and  on  the  train,  is  $3.50. 

As  we  leave  Cave  City  I  begin  to  realize  we  are  in  a  guerrilla 
country.  Every  time  the  train  stops  passengers  listen  atten- 
tively for  firing  and  ask  anxiously,  "What  now.''"  One  mili- 
tary gentleman  gets  out  ostentatiously  a  very  large  pistol. 
Military  conductor  tells  me  that  the  place  for  guerrillas  is  ten 
to  twenty  miles  north  of  Bowling  Green.  A  soldier  of  the 
guard,  who  heard  my  name  called,  sits  down  by  my  side,  asks 
if  I  have  relatives  in  Minnesota,  and  we  open  conversation. 
He  gives  me  a  story  of  some  interesting  guerrilla  adventures. 
It  is  growing  quite  dark  now.  And  he  says  the  guerrillas  attack 
only  the  night  trains  —  men  ought  not  to  travel  with  much 
money,  and  there  are  said  to  be  a  band  of  one  hundred  just 
below  here  —  we  have  a  guard  of  thirty  armed  —  and  much 
more  equally  interesting.  I  am  not  much  alarmed.  Except  for 
the  delay,  a  guerrilla  adventure  would  not  trouble  me  much. 
However,  I  put  the  bulk  of  my  money  in  my  pantaloons  watch 
pocket,  devise  a  scheme  for  hiding  my  watch,  then  pillow  my 
head  on  my  coat  and  go  to  sleep.  No  guerrilla  disturbs  my 
peace,  or  even  troubles  my  dreams. 

We  are  due  in  Nashville  at  one  o'clock.  A  freight  train  off 
the  track  delays  us.    We  do  not  arrive  till  four.    Walk  up  to 

the  Commercial  House.     S not  there.     On  to  the  St. 

Cloud.  Not  there.  Too  early  to  do  anything.  Too  late  to 
go  to  bed.  But  I  have  fallen  in  with  a  commercial  traveler 
from  Cincinnati.  He  is  going  to  a  private  boarding-house  as 
soon  as  it  is  fairly  light.    The  hotels  are  unpromising.     So  I 

go  with  him.    And  at  Mrs.  B 's  house,  on  Cherry  Street, 

I  am  writing  this  letter  while  I  wait  for  breakfast.  If  you 
could  see  the  room,  I  am  afraid  you  would  have  convulsions. 
There  are  two  or  three  beds  in  the  hall,  three  double  beds  and 
a  cot  in  this  room.  Of  course  no  privacy.  Board  $3  a  day.  I 
hope  some  gentleman  of  the  Commission  will  take  pity  on  and 
rescue  me.  .  .  . 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE   PROBLEM         247 

Slavery  is  dying  fast  in  Kentucky.  I  do  not  think  I  saw  ten 
negro  men  between  Louisville  and  Bowling  Green  not  in  sol- 
dier's uniform,  nor  five  including  those  in  Louisville,  if  I  ex- 
cept waiters  at  the  hotel. 

Clarksville,  Tennessee,  30th  March,  1865. 

I  believe  I  left  myself  just  going  down  to  breakfast.  For- 
tunately I  found  the  breakfast  better  than  the  lodging.  Got 
a  very  good  meal,  for  which  I  subsequently  paid  seventy-five 
cents.    Then  out  for  business.    Without  much  difiiculty  found 

the  Sanitary  rooms,  and  Judge  R ,  the  agent,  who  is  also 

our  representative  at  Nashville.  Originally  from  Wisconsin, 
and  a  very  pleasant  and  excellent  man,  as  I  judge.  The  refu- 
gee work  sadly  needs  organization. 

Under  a  military  order  Colonel  D ,  Methodist  preacher 

formerly,  is  appointed  superintendent  of  the  refugees.  He  has 
two  large  buildings  —  one  a  home,  the  other  a  hospital. 

In  these  buildings  are  an  average  of  400  to  500.  They  are 
continually  coming  in  for  help,  from  100  to  200  weekly.  And 
as  continually  he  ships  them  North.  The  Government  fur- 
nishes transportation  and  gives  them  food.  He  also  distributes 
rations  to  1,700  or  1,800  refugees  scattered  throughout  Nash- 
ville; while  the  city  is  crowded  with  3,000  or  4,000  of  these 
suffering  people,  only  the  most  destitute  of  whom  the  Govern- 
ment relieves.  There  is  a  useless  kind  of  school  in  one  of  the 
homes.  And  some  of  the  ladies  have  procured  and  distributed 
a  good  deal  of  clothing. 

After  dinner  went  up  to  St.  Cloud,  was  introduced  to  Gov- 
ernor Brownlow  and  several  leading  members  of  the  Legis- 
lature, and  went  up  with  them  to  the  Governor's  room.  In 
private  intercourse  he  is  a  very  quiet,  gentlemanly  man,  with 
an  inexpressibly  sad  cast  of  countenance;  no  trace  of  the  fierce- 
ness of  his  public  speeches.  Our  interview  was  very  pleasant 
and  very  gratifying.  I  think  the  Legislature  will  be  all  ready  to 
accept  our  cooperation  in  the  matter  of  education. 

There  are  now  no  public  schools  in  Nashville ;  no  really  good 
private  schools.  The  buildings  are  occupied  by  the  military. 
The  same  is  true  at  Knoxville.  The  State  has  no  money  to 
establish  them.  And  all  her  energies  must  be  at  first  devoted 
to  paying  debts  and  organizing  the  State  machinery.     Of 


248  REMINISCENCES 

course  nothing  definite  was  arranged.  But  I  suggested  that 
we  would  commission  and  pay  some  one  to  act  in  cooperation 
with  the  State  as  quasi  Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction 
—  a  suggestion  which  they  seemed  to  like.  Also  that  I  should 
like  to  be  in  correspondence  with  their  Committee  on  Educa- 
tion. And  they  suggested  that  I  come  to  Nashville,  after  an 
organization  has  been  perfected,  and  meet  with  the  Com- 
mittee, and  also  deliver  an  address  in  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives, which  I  said  I  should  be  glad  to  do  on  receiving  an 
invitation.  I  think  the  foundation  has  been  laid  for  effective, 
useful  work  in  Tennessee  by  this  visit. 

I  cannot  find  that  there  is  a  single  radical,  progressive,  live 
minister  in  Nashville.  I  strongly  incline  to  favor  commis- 
sioning one  as  chaplain  nominally  to  refugees,  really  to  organize 
and  build  up  a  liberty-loving,  progressive  church.  Also  I  favor 
opening  a  first-class  school  in  Nashville.  Connected  with  it 
might  be  a  Sunday-School.  Out  of  the  Sunday-School  might 
grow  a  church. 

CiiABKSViLLE,  TENNESSEE,  Friday,  31  March,  1865. 

All  that  Government  does  at  this  post  is  to  impress  build- 
ings, furnish  rations  and  some  materials  for  building  parti- 
tions, etc.,  with  furniture  for  the  house  and  stores  for  the 
hospital.  But  the  commander  at  Nashville  lays  a  special  tax 
on  liquor,  which  yields  a  revenue  of  $2,000  a  month,  which 
is  appropriated  to  the  refugee  work,  and  pays  extras,  teachers, 
clothing,  etc.  So  this  point  is  pretty  well  supplied  and  needs 
but  little  comparatively  from  us. 

After  dinner  Lieutenant  C detailed  a  sergeant,  who 

took  me  in  an  ambulance  to  the  contraband  camp,  about  a 
mile  out  of  towTi.  This  operation  is  necessarily  much  larger. 
The  negroes  can  neither  be  shipped  North  nor  scattered 
through  the  South.     There  are  about  2,000  in  camp  under 

military  law  —  Captain  B commanding.     He  received 

me  very  kindly  and  showed  me  all  over  the  camps.  Limited  as 
I  was  as  to  time,  I  had  not  much  opportunity  for  talking  with 
the  negroes.  Two  long  sheds  have  been  erected  by  the  ne- 
groes, something  like  soldiers'  barracks,  only  much  more  rude. 
These  are  partitioned  off  into  rooms.  Each  room  contains  six 
bunks  or  berths,  one  above  the  other.  A  chinmey,  built  in  the 
partition,  affords  a  fireplace  to  each  of  two  rooms.    In  these 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM    249 

rooms  live,  somewhat  promiscuously,  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren; an  arrangement  not  very  conducive  to  health,  comfort, 
or  morals  —  but  probably  the  best  practicable.  Very  few  of 
the  rooms  have  any  other  floor  than  Mother  Earth.  Besides 
these  family  barracks  are  others,  somewhat  similar,  for  negro 
soldiers.  These  homes  are  furnished  with  bedding  and  the 
negroes  with  clothing  by  themselves,  "borrowed"  —  see  Exo- 
dus —  from  their  masters.  For  the  universal  testimony  is  that 
"Negroes  will  steal."  "The  fact  is,"  said  a  slave-owner,  mem- 
ber of  the  new  Legislature,  to  me  in  Nashville,  "the  negroes 
thought,  as  we  did  not  pay  them  anything,  they  had  a  right 
to  help  themselves.  And  they  are  about  half  right.  The  only 
trouble  is  that  they  do  not  always  adjust  the  account  accu- 
rately." One  negro  girl  came  into  this  camp  bringing  pearls 
to  the  value  of  several  hundred  dollars.  All  such  articles  are 
returned  to  their  masters  when  called  for.  At  a  little  distance 
from  these  barracks  is  a  negro  village.  The  negroes  that  are 
able  to  procure  the  lumber  are  permitted  to  put  up  their  own 
houses,  with  little  garden  lots  about  them.  The  best  class  of 
negroes  do  this.  Most  of  these,  however,  are  the  families  of 
soldiers.  Attached  to  the  camp  is  a  large  field,  which  the  com- 
mandant is  putting  under  cultivation,  largely  to  tobacco. 
Thus  he  will  keep  them  at  work  and  help  support  them.  In  a 
long,  narrow  building  on  a  little  knoll  by  itself  is  a  school  with 
three  or  four  rooms.  By  the  side  of  it  is  a  rough  one-story 
board  house,  where  the  teachers  live.  Four  churches  in  and 
near  the  town  are  also  used  as  school-rooms.  There  is  a  shoe 
manufactory  where  the  negroes,  under  the  tuition  of  one  of 
their  number,  are  learning  to  make  shoes.  The  commandant's 
wife  is  teaching  the  girls  to  sew.  He  wishes  also  to  open  a  store, 
to  prevent  their  suffering  from  dishonest  traders  in  the  village, 
and,  in  connection  with  it,  to  open  a  savings  bank  where  they 
may  deposit  their  earnings. 

Of  course  such  an  enterprise  as  this  costs  a  great  deal  of 
money.  The  Government  furnishes  food  and  fuel.  The 
negroes  cut  their  own  lumber;  it  was  sawed  on  shares;  they 
built  their  own  barracks,  the  United  States  finding  the  nails. 
The  extra  expenses  are  borne  by  private  benevolence.  And 
here  is  the  rub.  There  is  no  organ  of  a  national  and  compre- 
hensive character  which  provides  it.    No  less  than  four  Freed- 


250  REMINISCENCES 

men's  Commissions  are  working  here,  without  unity  of  plan 
or  heartiness  of  cooperation.  None  can  do  much.  Each  is 
jealous  of  the  other.  The  colonel  wants  leather  for  his  shoe 
shop,  materials  for  his  sewing  girls,  clothing  for  the  destitute. 
There  is  no  one  responsible  party  to  whom  he  can  apply.  There 
are  two  Commissions  in  Cincinnati,  three  in  Indiana,  one  in 
Chicago,  one  in  New  York,  one  in  Philadelphia,  one  or  two  in 
Washington.  They  work  without  organization  or  coopera- 
tion. Indianapolis  takes  charge  of  the  orphan  asylum.  In- 
dianapolis and  Plainfield  both  are  engaged  in  the  school.  Both 
Boards  at  Cincinnati  have  agents  or  representatives  here. 
And  the  Old  School  Presbyterian  Board  are  going  to  send  a 
chaplain.  So  far  as  I  can  learn,  it  is  so  all  over  the  country  — 
a  disgrace  to  the  friends  of  freedom  and  humanity.  I  think 
we  shall  prevent,  by  the  perfection  of  our  organization,  a  like 
disgraceful  result  in  the  case  of  the  refugees.  .  .  . 

I  am  doubly  convinced  of  the  importance  of  the  South  as  a 
field  for  the  Christian  labor  of  Northern  patriotism.  In 
Clarksville  there  is  neither  a  good  school  nor  a  loyal  church. 
The  old  residents  are,  almost  without  exception,  secessionists. 
Northerners  do  probably  more  than  half  the  business.  But 
they  do  not  go  to  church  anywhere.  Whether  they  could  be 
drawn  into  the  right  kind  of  church  is  perhaps  uncertain.  In 
Nashville  there  are  two  Northern  loyal  clergy.  But  their  con- 
gregations are  mostly  soldiers.  Northerners  do  not  go  to 
church.  Southerners  are  rebels,  and  will  not.  One  of  the 
largest  churches  in  Nashville  (New  School)  contains  a  member- 
ship of  thirteen.  The  rest  have  all  left.  I  think  no  delusion  is 
greater  than  to  suppose  that  Northern  emigration  is  going  to 
save  the  South.  It  will  not  unless  Northern  piety  outruns  and 
outgenerals  Northern  cupidity.  I  am  more  than  ever  con- 
vinced that  we  must  send  our  best  and  ablest  men  South.  And 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Congregationalism,  if  the  cause  is 
wisely  managed,  will  possess  peculiar  facilities  in  the  work  of 
evangelization.  The  military  seize  a  church,  put  into  the 
pulpit  a  minister  against  the  will  of  the  people,  the  people  leave 
in  disgust.  But  if  a  new  man,  of  combined  wisdom  and  cour- 
age, quietly  supported  from  the  North,  should  go  to  Nashville, 
establish  a  mission  Sunday-School,  gather  by  personal  visita- 
tion the  people  into  his  church,  leave  them  to  manage  their  own 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM  251 

affairs,  he  would  not  begin  with  armed  prejudice  against  him; 
he  could  disarm  much  that  might  exist;  and  gradually  a  Con- 
gregational church  would,  not  be  formed,  but  grow  —  a  truly 
people's  church.  But  for  such  a  work  we  must  send  South  our 
best  and  ablest  men. 

This  visit  made  clear  to  me,  as  these  letters  will  make 
clear  to  my  readers,  the  threefold  task  in  which  I  had 
promised  to  engage.   For  success  it  was  necessary :  — 

To  unite  in  one  organization  the  various  local  and 
often  conflicting  societies,  and  to  secure  their  adoption 
of  the  principle  that  distinctions  of  race,  caste,  and  color 
should  be  disregarded.  Freedmen's  Societies  by  their 
very  title  emphasized  the  difference  between  the  freed- 
men  and  the  white  refugees. 

To  stimulate  the  dormant  and  develop  the  growing 
good  feeling  in  the  North  toward  the  people  of  the 
South,  and  to  organize  and  direct  it  in  wise  channels, 
not  merely  for  the  relief  of  present  distress,  but  for  the 
civil  and  social  reconstruction  of  the  South  on  a  basis 
of  liberty  and  justice. 

To  secure  the  cooperation  of  the  South  in  this 
undertaking;  to  find  men  who  realized  the  need  of 
a  new  South  and  who  would  welcome  Northern  allies 
in  the  endeavor  to  create  it;  and  to  work  in  fellow- 
ship with  them.  The  war  had  merely  destroyed  the 
barrier  between  North  and  South.  The  creation  of  a 
civil  and  social  union  of  the  States  must  be  the  work 
of  peace. 

The  greatness  of  the  undertaking  did  not  appall  me; 
it  excited  me.  I  have  always  found  joy  in  tackling  dijQS- 
cult  tasks.  I  set  about  preparations  for  closing  in  Terra 
Haute  one  chapter  of  my  life  and  opening  another 
in  New  York.  But  I  had  been  at  home  from  my  visit  to 
Tennessee  less  than  a  fortnight,  when,  like  a  bolt  of 


252  REMINISCENCES 

lightning  out  of  a  clear  sky,  came  the  assassination  of 
Abraham  Lincoln. 

Generally  half  a  century  after  a  great  disaster  one 
can  see  some  benefits  which  it  has  conferred  upon  man- 
kind. But,  looking  back  over  the  intervening  years,  I 
confess  myself  unable  to  see  any  benefit  to  the  people  of 
the  United  States  growing  out  of  the  assassination  of 
Abraham  Lincoln.  It  transformed  the  growing  good  feel- 
ing of  the  North  into  bitterness,  revived  the  expiring 
sectional  enmity,  robbed  the  Nation  of  its  leader,  caused 
the  work  of  political  reconstruction  to  be  carried  on  in 
the  spirit  of  war,  and  set  back,  apparently,  the  progress 
of  the  Nation  toward  liberty  and  union  at  least  a  quarter 
of  a  century. 

It  was  not,  like  the  assassination  of  President  Garfield 
and  that  of  President  McEIinley,  the  act  of  an  individual 
crazed  by  his  own  fanaticism.  A  simultaneous  attempt 
was  made  by  Lewis  Payson  on  the  life  of  William  H. 
Seward.  The  fact  of  a  far-reaching  conspiracy  was  sub- 
sequently established  by  a  trial  of  the  conspirators,  four 
of  whom  were  hanged  and  two  sentenced  to  life  imprison- 
ment. How  far  it  extended,  who  was  concerned  in  it,  no 
one  knew.  Suspicion  is  never  restrained.  Men  promi- 
nent in  the  Confederacy  fell  for  the  moment  under  sus- 
picion. Even  so  phlegmatic  a  leader  as  General  Grant 
was  not  immune  from  the  general  epidemic;  he  tele- 
graphed to  Richmond  to  "  arrest  all  paroled  officers  .  .  . 
unless  they  take  the  oath  of  allegiance."  The  Con- 
federate States  fell  for  the  moment  under  the  irrational 
wrath  of  the  North.  When  was  public  wrath  ever  guided 
by  reason.^  "Magnanimity,"  says  Mr.  Rhodes,  "to  the 
beaten  foe  was  the  sentiment  of  Monday;  a  cry  for 
justice  and  vengeance,  a  demand  that  the  leaders  of  the 
rebellion  should  be  hanged,  were  heard  everywhere  on 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM         253 

Saturday."  On  the  morning  of  his  assassination  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  had  said,  "No  one  need  expect  me  to  take 
any  part  in  kilhng  these  men,  even  the  worst  of  them. 
Frighten  them  out  of  the  country,  open  the  gates,  let 
down  the  bars,  scare  them  off.  Enough  lives  have  been 
sacrificed.  We  must  extinguish  our  resentments  if  we 
expect  harmony  and  union."  On  the  Sunday  following 
the  assassination  President  Johnson  exclaimed,  "I  hold 
that  robbery  is  a  crime,  rape  is  a  crime,  treason  is  a 
crime,  and  crime  must  be  made  infamous  and  traitors 
must  be  punished."  Lincoln  expressed  the  sentiment  of 
the  people  before  the  assassination,  Johnson  their  senti- 
ment after  it. 

This  passionate  resentment  might  in  time  have  been 
extinguished,  but  the  political  events  which  followed 
transformed  it  into  a  deliberate  policy  of  hostility  to  the 
South. 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  a  new  type  of  statesman.  Public 
men  before  this  time  had  served  the  people;  but  he  was 
a  servant  of  the  people.  As  the  orator  understands 
and  by  his  speech  interprets  to  his  audience  their  un- 
formulated thoughts,  so  Mr.  Lincoln  understood  and  by 
his  acts  interpreted  to  the  people  their  unformulated 
will.  And  he  at  the  same  time  and  by  the  same  process 
developed  and  organized  their  individual  and  unex- 
pressed aspirations  into  a  national  purpose.  In  his  elec- 
tion he  saw  the  evidence  that  the  people  were  weary  of 
compromise  with  slavery,  and  in  the  critical  months  of 
Buchanan's  timid  and  shifty  policy  he  interposed  a 
quiet  but  indomitable  resistance  to  all  the  compromise 
measures  proposed  by  some  of  his  frightened  followers. 
When  the  secessionists  fired  on  the  flag,  he  was  quick 
to  see  that  the  issue  was  no  longer  the  non-extension  of 
slavery  but  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  and  in  his 


254  REMINISCENCES 

famous  letter  to  Horace  Greeley  in  1862  he  expressed  the 
purpose  of  the  Nation:  "If  I  could  save  the  Union  with- 
out freeing  any  slave  I  would  do  it;  and  if  I  could  save  it 
by  freeing  all  the  slaves  I  would  do  it;  and  if  I  could  save 
it  by  freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone  I  would  do 
it."  At  the  same  time  that  sentence,  "If  I  could  save 
it  by  freeing  all  the  slaves  I  would  do  it,"  prepared  the 
conservatives  for  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  when 
it  came.  The  Nation  emancipated  the  slaves.  Lincoln 
held  the  pen;  the  people  wjiom  lie  had  educated  dic- 
tated the  document. 

He  would  have  pursued  the  same  cautious  policy  in 
dealing  with  reconstruction.  I  say  he  would  have  done 
so,  because,  in  so  far  as  he  had  the  opportunity,  this  is 
what  he  did.  He  was  essentially  a  pragmatist  in  politics, 
and  tested  all  policies  by  the  question.  Will  they  succeed? 
He  put  his  policy  of  reconstruction  in  a  characteristic 
figure:  "We  shall  sooner  have  the  fowl  by  hatching  the 
egg  than  by  smashing  it."  The  radicals  after  his  death 
tried  smashing  the  egg,  with  disastrous  results.  A  re- 
construction bill  of  Congress,  passed  in  the  early  summer 
of  1864,  which  assumed  that  the  States  had  lost  their 
Statehood  by  secession,  he  allowed  to  lapse  without  a 
veto  by  declining  to  sign  it  after  Congress  had  ad- 
journed. He  privately  declared  that  he  considered  "the 
discussion  as  to  whether  a  State  had  been  at  any  time 
out  of  the  Union  as  vain  and  fruitless.  We  know  they 
were,  we  know  they  shall  be  in  the  Union.  It  does  not 
greatly  matter  whether  in  the  meantime  they  shall  be 
considered  to  have  been  in  or  out."  He  authorized  the 
people  of  Louisiana  to  try  their  hand  at  reconstruc- 
tion, and  suggested  that  some  of  the  colored  people 
might  be  allowed  to  vote,  "as,  for  instance,  the  very  in- 
telligent, and  those  who  have  fought  gallantly  in  our 


RECONSTRUCTION:  THE  PROBLEM         ^55 

ranks."  At  the  same  time  he  pubHcly  declared  that  he 
was  fully  satisfied  with  the  system  of  reconstruction  out- 
lined in  the  act  of  Congress  as  one  proper  for  any  State 
to  adopt,  if  it  wished  to  do  so.  The  radicals  attempted  to 
go  to  the  country  on  the  issue  thus  raised,  and  nominated 
General  Fremont  as  a  radical  Republican  candidate  for 
the  Presidency,  but  got  so  little  response  from  the  people 
that  the  candidate  withdrew  and  all  Republican  oppo- 
sition to  Mr.  Lincoln  was  abandoned.  These  facts  are 
sufficient  to  justify  the  historian  in  affirming-  that  if  Mr. 
Lincoln  had  lived  he  would  have  pursued  a  conciliatory 
policy  toward  the  people  of  the  South;  he  would  have 
largely  intrusted  the  reconstruction  of  the  States  to 
those  who  lived  within  them;  he  would  have  effectively 
used  his  influence  for  a  gradual  enfranchisement  of  the 
negro  race  upon  some  such  basis  of  property  and  edu- 
cational qualifications  as  has  now  been  adopted  by 
several  of  the  Southern  States;  and  in  this  policy  he 
would  have  had  the  support  of  the  majority  of  the 
people  of  the  North. 

At  his  death  a  man  of  very  different  temperament 
succeeded  to  his  office.  It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to 
attempt  any  estimate  of  President  Johnson's  character. 
His  warmest  eulogist  would  not  commend  him  as  a 
peacemaker.  He  attempted  to  force  his  policies  upon  a 
hostile  Congress.  The  result  was  four  years  of  increas- 
ingly bitter  political  warfare:  warfare  between  the 
President  and  Congress;  between  the  South  and  the 
North;  between  the  white  race  and  the  negro  race; 
culminating  in  the  unsuccessful  impeachment  of  the 
President  by  Congress,  in  the  enactment  of  the  unwise 
and  unjust  Force  Bill,  in  the  temporarily  successful  at- 
tempt to  force  universal  suffrage  on  the  Southern 
States,  in  the  finally  successful  attempt  of  the  South- 


/ 


256  REMINISCENCES 

ern  States  to  recover  political  domination  for  the  white 
race  by  revolutionary  methods,  and  in  a  consequent 
period  of  civil  and  industrial  disorder  in  the  South 
popularly  known  as  the  "Reconstruction  Period," 
which  some  Southerners  believe  inflicted  on  the  States 
a  greater  injury  than  was  inflicted  by  the  Civil  War. 

It  was  during  these  four  years  of  political  anarchy, 
from  1865  to  1869,  that  I  was  endeavoring  to  promote  by 
measures  wholly  pacific  a  work  of  moral  reconstruction 
in  the  South.  Whether  any  one  could  have  succeeded 
I  do  not  know.  It  required  both  greater  resources  and 
greater  abilities  than  I  possessed  to  win  the  success  I 
had  hoped  for.  What  share  I  had  in  this  work,  what  prin- 
ciples I  adopted,  what  difficulties  I  encountered,  and 
what  my  associates  and  I  accomplished  will  be  shown  in 
the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  XII 

reconstruction:  efforts  for  its  solution 

ON  the  last  Sunday  in  April,  1865,  I  preached  my 
farewell  sermon  in  Terre  Haute  and  started  imme- 
diately thereafter  for  the  East.  On  our  way  we  met 
the  funeral  cortege  bearing  the  body  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
to  its  resting-place  in  Springfield,  Illinois.  As  soon  as  my 
wife  and  children  were  settled  in  our  temporary  home  in 
the  boarding-house  in  New  York  where  my  father  was 
living,  and  I  had  acquainted  myself  with  the  details  and 
with  the  workers  at  the  office  of  the  Commission,  I 
started  for  Washington  and  Richmond.  In  the  former 
city  I  wished  to  see  General  O.  0.  Howard,  the  head  of 
the  newly  constituted  Freedmen's  Bureau;  in  the  latter 
city  I  hoped  to  acquaint  myself  with  conditions  in  Vir- 
ginia and  with  the  agent  of  our  Society  who  was  already 
there  engaged  in  the  work.  My  letters  to  my  wife  were 
briefer  than  they  had  been  from  Tennessee,  but  extracts 
from  two  letters  will  give  the  reader  a  better  idea  of  my 
work  than  I  could  do  now  from  my  faded  recollection :  — 

Wednesday.  Breakfast  at  7.30  a.m.  Then  went  down  to 
boat  for  Alexandria.  .  .  .  Went  to  General  Howard's.  I  had 
undertaken  to  draw  up  a  circular  letter  to  the  public  to  give 
the  outline  of  his  policy.  Obtained  his  ideas,  quietly  insinu- 
ated some  of  my  own,  and  took  the  draft  home  to  draw  up  in 
form.  I  like  General  Howard  very  much.  And,  unless  I 
greatly  mistake,  my  stay  in  Washington  will  pay  in  my  future 
intercourse  with  the  Government,  though  it  has  accomplished 
very  little  now. 


258  REMINISCENCES 

Thursday.    Arose  early  this  morning  and  drew  up  circular 

letter.     After  breakfast  submitted  it  to  Dr.  M ,  made 

some  alterations  at  his  suggestion,  and  at  10  a.m.  went  up  to 
War  Department.  Met  General  Howard  there,  and  we  all 
walked  up  to  his  quarters  together.  He  had  just  got  in  some 
desks,  but  had  no  chairs,  notliing  yet  in  shape.  Submitted  the 
circular  letter  to  him,  which  he  afterwards  read  to  some  rep- 
resentatives of  Freedmen's  organizations  present,  and  later 
still  to  General  Thomas,  Adjutant-General.  It  was  adopted 
with  no  material  alteration,  and,  between  you  and  me,  as  pub- 
lished before  now  to  the  country,  is  a  good  deal  my  work.  It 
recognizes  refugees  as  well  as  freedmen,  which  otherwise  would 
not  have  been  done.  .  .  . 

Richmond,  Vibginia,  23d  May,  1865. 

I  bade  you  good-by  at  Fortress  Monroe.  We  had  a  very 
pleasant  sail  up  the  James  River.  But  first  we  saw  at  Fortress 
Monroe  the  steamer  on  which  Jeff  Davis  was  then  a  prisoner. 
It  was  pointed  out  to  us  by  several,  among  others  by  a  young 
surgeon  who  had  belonged  to  a  man-of-war  that  was  standing 
guard  over  him.  We  left  our  boat  and  took  another  at  City 
Point.  Here  the  fortifications  begin.  The  river  on  both  sides 
is  lined  with  them.  No  advance  on  Richmond  up  the  river 
would  have  been  possible.  We  fell  in  with  some  officers,  who 
explained  all  the  works  to  us,  pointed  out  Dutch  Gap  Canal, 
Fort  Darling,  Chapin's  Farm,  Bermuda  Hundred,  etc.,  etc. 
Reached  Richmond  at  night  about  7  p.m.  Saturday.  We 
went  to  a  rebel  major's  house,  a  private  boarding-house,  where 
the  Confederates  conquered  me.  I  was  attacked  in  the  night 
by  a  large  army  of  small  infantry,  and  after  a  brief  but  bloody 
battle  I  retired  in  good  order  from  the  field  and  slept  on  the 
floor. 

If  the  reader  does  not  find  much  romance  in  these  let- 
ters, he  may  imagine  that  I  did  not  find  much  romance 
in  the  work.  The  conditions  in  Virginia  were  far  more 
discouraging  than  they  were  in  Tennessee.  There  was 
not  in  Richmond  a  single  newspaper  which  was  inter- 
ested in  any  attempt  to  create  a  new  South.  There  was 
not,  so  far  as  I  could  learn,  a  single  minister  who  pointed 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  259 

toward  or  hoped  for  the  coming  days.  "The  clergy,"  I 
wrote,  "who  have  been  for  four  years  preaching  slavery 
and  secession,  cannot  now  preach  liberty  and  union.  If 
they  attempt  it,  the  people  attribute  their  conversion  to 
fear  or  self-interest."  An  agent  of  the  American  Tract 
Society  was  told  that  his  publications  would  be  wel- 
comed if  the  local  society  could  put  its  own  imprint  on 
them.  "We  do  not  believe,"  said  the  Richmond  repre- 
sentative, "in  an  American  Tract  Society.  We  are  going 
to  maintain  a  Virginia  Tract  Society."  Some  Bibles  had 
started  before  the  war  from  the  American  Bible  Society 
for  Richmond,  but  had  been  housed  in  Baltimore  during 
the  war  and  shipped  to  Richmond  when  the  war  ended 
and  the  blockade  was  raised.  And  the  Richmond  Bible 
Society  refused  to  receive  them  because  they  bore  the 
imprint  "American"  Bible  Society. 

There  were  a  few  Union  men  in  Richmond,  but  very 
few.  And  of  these  few  not  many  were  inclined  to  declare 
themselves.  They  were  right  to  keep  silent.  To  speak 
was  to  invite  obloquy,  if  nothing  worse.  They  must 
bide  their  time.  One  of  them  gave  me  a  dramatic  ac- 
count of  conditions  during  the  last  weeks  of  the  war.  He 
was  a  school-teacher;  received  six  hundred  dollars  tui- 
tion for  each  pupil;  and  the  week  before  the  surrender 
paid,  in  Confederate  money,  seventy-jfive  dollars  for  a 
pair  of  boots  and  twelve  hundred  dollars  for  a  barrel  of 
flour.  He  congratulated  himself  on  the  bargain.  He  had 
been  wise  enough  to  realize  that  anything  was  better  than 
Confederate  money. 

While  I  was  in  Richmond  Sherman's  army  passed 
through  the  city  on  its  way  North.  It  was  a  pathetic 
sight.  In  the  summer  of  1861  I  had  seen  perhaps  some 
of  these  very  regiments  marching  down  Broadway  to 
the    war  —  colors    flying,    bands    playing,    bayonets 


260  REMINISCENCES 

glistening,  voices  cheering.  Now  they  marched  through 
a  captured  city  as  silent  as  if  it  had  been  deserted  by 
its  inhabitants,  or  as  if  some  magic  spell  of  silence  had 
been  laid  upon  them  by  an  evil  genie.  Not  a  flag  flying, 
not  a  handkerchief  fluttering,  not  a  cheer  uttered;  no 
populace  upon  the  sidewalk,  no  faces  at  the  windows; 
no  small  boys  in  extemporized  procession  accompanying 
the  troops.  The  troops  themselves  bore  witness  to  the 
campaigning  they  had  passed  through:  no  prancing 
horses  here,  no  eager  faces,  no  gay  caparisons,  no  gleam- 
ing muskets;  instead,  well-worn  garments,  pans  and 
kettles  thrown  over  the  shoulders  or  jangling  from  the 
horses'  backs,  and  flag-poles  borne  aloft  in  sad  triumph, 
from  which  almost  every  vestige  of  the  once  gay  flag  had 
been  shot  away.  The  war  was  worth  all  that  it  cost.  But 
the  cost  was  terribly  great  —  cost  to  conquered  and  cost 
to  conqueror. 

I  returned  to  the  North  not  discouraged,  but  certainly 
not  encouraged,  by  what  I  had  seen.  My  triple  task  —  of 
federating  the  Freedmen's  Societies,  inspiring  the  kindly 
feeling  of  the  North,  and  securing  the  cooperation  of  the 
South  —  was  carried  on  simultaneously;  but  I  shall  best 
describe  it  to  my  readers  as  three  separate  and  successive 
tasks. 

Over  a  dozen  local  undenominational  societies  sprang 
up  in  the  North  to  render  aid  to  the  freedmen.  They  were 
known  as  Freedmen's  Societies.  They  were  working  with 
little  or  no  cooperation,  and  sometimes  in  rivalry.  The 
7  American  Union  Commission  was  the  only  society  which 
ignored  all  distinctions  of  color  and  was  organized  to 
help  its  unfortunate  brethren  in  the  South,  whether  white 
or  black,  freemen  or  freedmen.  It  was  also,  I  think,  the 
only  society  which  was  national  in  its  organization.  The 
Freedmen's  Societies  were  naturally  reluctant  to  aban- 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  261 

don  the  advantage  which'  their  name  and  their  limita- 
tion of  purpose  gave  to  them.  For  the  North  had  a  great 
and,  as  it  has  proved,  a  permanent  sympathy  with  the  ex- 
slave;  but  after  the  assassination  of  Abraham  Lincoln  it 
had  none  for  the  white  people  of  the  South.  The  hostility 
to  the  South  had  to  be  allayed  and  sympathy  with  the 
South  created  in  order  to  obtain  funds  for  a  non-secta- 
rian and  non-racial  service  in  the  South.  But  the  radical 
abolitionists,  who  had  insisted  on  no  distinction  because 
of  race  or  color  when  that  principle  was  of  benefit  to  the 
negro,  could  not  deny  it  because  it  was  of  benefit  to  the 
white  man.  The  founders  of  the  American  Union  Com- 
mission had  thought  that  the  way  to  ignore  distinctions 
of  race  and  color  was  to  ignore  them.  Therefore,  in  the 
oflScial  declaration  of  their  purpose  they  had  not  men- 
tioned by  name  negro  or  slave  or  freedman.  "The  Com- 
mission," they  said,  "is  constituted  for  the  purpose  of 
aiding  and  cooperating  with  the  people  of  that  portion  of 
the  United  States  which  has  been  desolated  and  impov- 
erished by  the  war  in  the  restitution  of  their  civil  and 
social  conditions  upon  the  basis  of  industry,  education, 
freedom,  and  Christian  morality."  This  was  not  enough 
for  those  who  had  organized  and  were  carrying  on  the 
work  of  relief  and  education  among  the  freedmen.  They 
were  not  content  merely  to  ignore  all  distinctions  of  caste, 
race,  or  color;  they  wanted  to  declare  that  they  did  so. 
They  accepted  our  principle,  but  insisted  that  it  should 
be  formally  declared;  we  acquiesced;  and  for  our  simple 
declaration  was  substituted  in  the  reorganized  society 
the  following:  — 

The  object  of  this  Commission  is  the  relief,  education,  and 
elevation  of  the  freedmen  of  the  United  States,  and  to  aid  and 
cooperate  with  the  people  of  the  South,  without  distinction  of 
race  or  color,  in  the  improvement  of  their  condition  upon  the 


262  REMINISCENCES 

basis  of  Industry,  education,  freedom,  and  Christian  morality. 
No  school  or  depot  of  supplies  shall  be  maintained  from  the 
benefits  of  which  any  shall  be  excluded  because  of  color. 

The  next  diflfieulty  in  bringing  the  societies  together  in 
one  national  organization  was  the  question  of  officers. 
Who  should  be  its  head  and  direct  its  policy.'*  That,  so 
far  as  I  was  concerned,  was  easily  settled.  As  soon  as  I 
saw  the  union  of  all  the  undenominational  societies  in 
sight  I  tendered  my  resignation  as  general  secretary. 
"I  am  unwilling,"  I  said  in  my  letter,  "that  my  name 
and  official  position  should  be  any  source  of  embarrass- 
ment in  the  final  consummation  of  this  union,  or  that  it 
should  be  deemed  a  matter  of  courtesy  either  to  myself 
or  to  the  Union  Commission  to  continue  my  oflBcial  con- 
nection in  the  United  Commission." 

This  resignation  was  not  accepted .  Instead  I  was  elected 
by  the  united  organization  its  general  secretary,  and  Mr. 
J.  Miller  McKim,  who  had  been  the  general  secretary  of 
the  New  York  Freedmen's  Aid  Society,  was  elected 
corresponding  secretary.  He  was  a  Friend,  belonging  to 
the  Hicksite  branch,  I  was  a  Congregationalist;  he  was  a 
Unitarian  in  his  sympathies,  I  was  an  orthodox  minis- 
ter; he  a  radical,  I,  as  compared  with  him,  a  conserva- 
tive. But  our  object  was  the  same.  We  were  both  unsel- 
fishly devoted  to  the  intellectual  and  moral  reconstruc- 
tion of  a  new  South,  and  in  the  four  years  of  cooperation 
which  followed  I  do  not  think  the  good  understanding  be- 
tween us  was  ever  interrupted  in  a  single  instance.  So 
much  more  important  for  cooperation  is  unity  of  spirit 
than  unity  of  opinion. 

What  proved  to  be  the  most  diflBcuIt  obstacle  of  all  to 
the  union  was  the  question  of  name.  It  often  happens, 
as  it  did  in  this  case,  that  the  questions  of  least  signifi- 
cance became  questions  of  greatest  importance.     The 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  263 

sense  of  relative  values  is,  I  sometimes  think,  the  sense 
least  developed,  especially  in  reformers.  The  final  re- 
organization was  effected  in  the  month  of  May,  1866. 
It  resulted  at  once  in  considerable  economies  in  adminis- 
tration. Two  central  offices,  one  in  Cincinnati,  one  in 
Washington,  were  discontinued,  the  two  offices  in  New 
York  City  were  united  in  one,  salaries  were  reduced,  and 
one  national  publication  was  made  to  do  the  work  before 
done  by  at  least  three.  It  is  to  this  monthly  periodical 
that  I  am  indebted  for  the  extracts  and  much  of  the 
information  given  below. 

I  had  written  to  my  wife  in  February  from  New  York 
before  accepting  the  office  of  secretary  that  I  should  not 
be  charged  with  the  duty  of  raising  money.  "They  do 
not  expect  me,"  I  wrote,  "to  do  any  collecting  agency 

business.    I  should,  for  example,  write  to  Mr.  H , 

arrange  through  him  for  a  public  meeting  in  Masonic 
Hall,  attend  perhaps  myself  as  one  of  the  speakers,  but 
rely  largely  on  the  interest  and  cooperation  of  others  there. 
This  is  the  plan  they  are  now  pursuing  successfully." 
Moreover,  we  had  a  financial  secretary,  to  whom  the  duty 
of  raising  funds  was  especially  intrusted.  George  J. 
Mingins  was  a  natural  orator.  He  had  wit,  humor,  im- 
agination, sentiment,  emotion,  a  good  voice,  freedom  of 
action,  and  aptness  in  expression.  He  was  an  admirable 
story-teller.  A  slight  Scotch  burr  added  fascination  to 
his  speech.    No  one  ever  went  out  while  he  was  speaking. 

Nevertheless  I  had  experience  enough  in  the  money- 
raising  campaign  to  give  me  ever  after  a  vital  sympathy 
with  that  much  underrated  and  much  overworked  pro- 
fession —  the  secretary  of  a  religious  or  philanthropic 
society.  Such  a  secretary  must  be  in  three  places  at 
once  —  at  least  the  three  are  constantly  calling  for  him. 
He  must  be  in  the  field  to  know  how  the  work  for  which 


264  REMINISCENCES 

he  is  responsible  is  going  on,  and  to  give  cheer  and  cour- 
age to  the  workers  who  complain  to  themselves,  if  not 
to  him,  if  a  year  goes  by  without  a  call  from  their  chief. 
He  must  be  with  his  constituents,  on  whose  interest  and 
enthusiasm  he  is  dependent  for  the  means  with  which  to 
carry  on  the  work.  They  complain  if  he  does  not  come, 
and  endure  him  if  he  does.  Men  welcome  an  opportu- 
nity to  make  money,  but  resent  an  opportunity  to  use  it. 
And  while  he  is  in  the  field  or  with  his  constituents  he 
is  always  reflecting  that  he  ought  to  be  in  his  oiEce.  If  he 
is  absent  for  a  week,  he  returns  to  find  his  desk  snowed 
under  by  a  mass  of  correspondence,  and  every  corre- 
spondent imagines  that  he  is  the  only  one  who  has  written, 
and  grumbles  if  he  does  not  get  a  reply  by  return  of  mail. 

I  suppose  my  experience  was  neither  better  nor  worse 
than  the  average.  The  letters  to  my  wife  portray  some 
of  the  sorrows  of  an  itinerant  secretary.  Sometimes  the 
meeting  was  good  and  the  collection  was  poor.  Some- 
times the  weather  was  almost  prohibitive.  Sometimes 
the  speakers  we  wanted  were  absent  and  the  speaker  that 
we  did  not  want  was  present.  Sometimes  the  audience 
failed  to  appear.  This  part  of  my  work  had  no  attrac- 
tions for  me.  To  speak  to  the  head  is  interesting;  to 
speak  to  the  heart  is  fascinating;  to  speak  to  the  pocket 
is  dreary  work.  I  wrote  my  wife:  "I  think  a  year  will 
tire  me  of  this  traveling,  desultory  life;  I  can  hardly  go 
into  a  church  but  that  I  wish  I  were  a  preacher  again,  or 
into  a  library  but  that  I  want  the  old  opportunities  for 
study." 

Our  campaign  for  funds  was  not,  however,  as  dis- 
couraging as  these  letters  might  imply.  Successful 
mass-meetings  were  held  in  Boston,  New  York,  Phila- 
delphia, Chicago,  San  Francisco.  General  Howard, 
Phillips  Brooks,  Bishop  Simpson,  Chief  Justice  Chase, 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  265 

Henry  Ward  Beecher,  Governor  Andrews  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, were  among  the  champions  of  our  cause. 
A  committee  of  well-known  citizens  was  appointed  by 
the  Union  League  Club  of  New  York  City  to  cooperate 
with  us  in  raising  funds  for  our  work.  Our  first  annual 
report  showed  that  we  were  a  national  organization  with 
nine  local  or  district  branches  covering  practically  all  the 
Northern  States  east  of  the  Mississippi  River,  including 
Maryland  and  Delaware;  had  collected  and  expended 
in  the  South  over  eight  hundred  thousand  dollars  in 
money  and  supplies,  partly  for  relief,  but  largely  for  edu- 
cational work;  and  were  sustaining  or  helping  to  sustain 
three  hundred  schools  in  the  South.  These  schools  were 
in  every  Southern  State  except  Delaware  and  Texas. 
Of  these  I  was  able  to  write :  "They  embrace  among  their 
instructors  many  of  the  best  and  most  experienced  teach- 
ers the  North  can  furnish."  At  the  end  of  five  years  we 
had  raised  and  expended  at  a  minimum  cost  for  admin- 
istration five  milhon  dollars,  about  one  fifth  of  it  contrib- 
uted from  abroad,  chiefly  from  England. 

In  this  work  we  were  confronted  with  three  funda- 
mental questions:  What  should  be  the  attitude  of  our 
representatives  toward  the  people  of  the  Southern  com- 
munities? What  should  be  our  attitude  toward  the 
missionary  work  carried  on  in  the  South  by  our 
Northern  contemporaries.''  And  what  should  be  our 
attitude  toward  the  black  and  the  white  races  .'^ 

I.  We  sought,  and  to  a  considerable  degree  secured, 
the  cooperation  of  the  men  and  women  in  the  South.  We 
had  Southern  men  acting  as  our  representatives  and 
Southern  teachers  teaching  in  our  freedmen's  schools. 
My  experience  during  these  five  years  of  work  in  the 
South  convinced  me  that  for  the  prejudice  then  more 
widely  entertained  than  now  against  Northern  schools 


266  REMINISCENCES 

and  Northern  teachers  working  for  the  negro  in  the 
Southern  States,  the  Northern  missionary  teachers  are 
partly  responsible.  I  can  best  illustrate  this  fact  by  a 
single  typical  instance  —  an  extract  from  a  letter  written 
to  our  oflfice  by  one  of  our  teachers  in  the  South  and  our 
reply:  — 

By  the  way,  I  must  tell  you  two  little  bits  of  news.  First,  a 
lady  in  town  has  offered  to  give  music  to  colored  children,  and  I 
was  requested  to  make  the  announcement  in  school.  I  did  so 
with  a  smile  in  my  sleeve.  Second,  several  are  quite  anxious 
that  we  should  have  a  gentleman  in  school  as  a  teacher  of  the 
boys.  It  is  some  one  who  lives  in  town.  ...  I  have  no  ob- 
jection to  the  people  here  opening  a  school,  but  I  do  not  care 
to  get  up  a  school  and  then  give  it  over  to  them,  or  take  them 
into  it  with  me. 

To  this  letter  I  replied:  — 

That  is  a  serious  mistake.  This  is  just  what  we  want  to  do. 
The  whole  object  of  the  Commission  is  to  stimulate  the  South- 
em  people  to  take  up  and  carry  on  this  work  of  education 
themselves.  Our  constitution  provides  for  cooperation  with 
them.  All  our  plans  and  methods  are  formed  with  that  end 
in  view.  The  more  Southerners  we  can  take  into  our  schools 
with  us,  the  better.  The  sooner  we  can  turn  our  present  schools 
over  to  them  and  go  into  new  neighborhoods  where  no  schools 
are,  the  better  for  our  work.  The  sooner  the  people  of  the 
South  awake  to  the  importance  of  this  educational  work  and 
take  it  off  our  hands  altogether,  the  better  for  them,  for  the 
colored  people,  and  for  the  whole  country.  The  faintest  indi- 
cation of  an  inclination  to  cooperate  in  the  work  of  educating 
the  colored  people  should  be  cordially  welcomed.    We  should 

go   more   than   halfway   to   meet   them.     Miss can 

render  to  the  freedmen  no  so  great  a  service  as  that  which 
she  will  accomplish  by  encouraging  and  stimulating  such  indi- 
cations of  a  willingness  to  cooperate  in  this  work.  No  assiduity 
in  personal  labor  can  compensate  for  the  evil  which  will  result 
from  any  policy  which  repels  such  advances  and  tends  to  per- 
petuate the  estrangement  between  the  white  and  colored 
people. 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  267 

That  this  was  the  spirit  in  which  the  work  of  the  Com- 
mission was  generally  carried  on  is  indicated  by  repeated 
letters  from  the  field  published  in  the  national  journal; 
an  extract  from  one  of  our  representatives  must  suflBce 
here.  To  teachers  who  purposed  to  come  South  and 
enter  upon  the  work  he  writes:  — 

Two  methods  of  procedure  are  open  to  you.  On  the  one 
hand,  you  may  enter  a  city,  secure  your  location  without  con- 
sulting the  authorities,  make  your  acquaintances  and  friends 
solely  among  the  negroes,  ignore  the  whites,  disregard  local 
customs  and  lifelong  prejudices  and  opinions.  .  .  .  Suppose, 
on  the  other  hand,  you  are  earnest  at  first  to  instill  the  people 
with  a  correct  knowledge  of  your  undertaking.  For  this  pur- 
pose you  confer  with  the  mayor,  aldermen,  or  clergymen; 
seek  their  advice;  as  much  as  possible  conform  to  it;  are 
courteous,  frank,  and  kind  to  all;  exhibit  this  spirit  in  word, 
act,  and  expression;  and  conform  to  local  customs  and  prac- 
tices whenever  such  conformity  will  not  compromise  principle. 
By  this  course  you  will  show  yourself  and  your  society  sincere 
in  your  expressed  desire  to  cooperate  as  well  as  aid. 

Carrying  on  our  work  in  this  spirit,  we  not  only  had 
the  cooperation  of  Southern  men  and  women  in  our  work 
of  educating  the  freedmen,  but  Southern  men  and  women 
who  were  attempting,  under  great  diflSculty,  to  give  the 
negro  an  education  sought  for  our  aid  and  cooperation, 
which  it  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  say  was  always  gladly 
given.  In  one  case  our  freedmen's  schools  were  taken 
over  bodily  by  a  prominent  Southern  city  and  made  a 
part  of  the  public  school  system;  in  another  case  mate- 
rial financial  aid  was  given  to  our  work. 

II.  We  did  not  regard  the  South  as  a  proper  field  for 
missionary  effort.  We  went  into  the  South  as  we  had 
gone  and  are  still  going  into  the  West,  not  to  convert  a 
non-Christian  or  imperfectly  Christian  people,  but  to  aid 
a  people  impoverished  by  war  in  establishing  the  corner- 


268  REMINISCENCES 

stone  of  democracy  —  a  public  school  system.  We  had 
no  quarrel  with  the  missionary  work  of  Northern 
churches,  and  entered  into  no  rivalry  with  their  denomi- 
national schools.  But  our  aim  was  not  theirs.  We  occa- 
sionally were  criticised  by  representatives  of  missionary 
societies  for  our  lack  of  religion,  and  this  criticism  we  met 
from  time  to  time  by  a  declaration  of  our  principles. 
"Important,"  said  our  national  organ,  "as  is  that  dis- 
tinctively religious  work  which  only  the  ecclesiastical 
and  missionary  boards  can  perform,  there  is  also  another, 
the  importance  of  which  all  men  increasingly  recognize 
—  the  promotion  of  popular  education  in  the  South  by 
the  establishment  in  the  several  States  of  common 
schools  not  under  ecclesiastical  control.  This  is  the 
peculiar  province  of  this  Commission;  and  it  is  a  work 
which  can  be  well  essayed  only  by  a  society  owning  alle- 
giance to  no  particular  church,  but  alone  to  the  great 
cause  of  Christ  as  represented  in  that  down-fallen  hu- 
manity which  constitutes,  in  popular  estimate,  the  least 
among  his  brethren." 

So  resolute  was  at  times  the  effort  to  create  a  prejudice 
against  the  Commission  because  Episcopalians  and 
Quakers,  Orthodox  and  Unitarians,  worked  cordially  to- 
gether in  maintaining  it,  that  in  September,  1866,  I  pre- 
pared a  paper  on  "Education  and  Religion,"  which  dealt 
in  a  large  way  with  the  whole  problem  of  the  relation  of 
organized  religion  to  public  education.  It  embodied  that 
principle  for  which  I  have  stood  throughout  my  life  — 
that  Christianity  is  more  than  denominationalism.  "  We 
desire,"  I  said,  "the  more  that  our  schools  may  be  truly 
Christian  because  they  are  unecclesiastical."  Looking 
back,  I  can  see  that  in  this  practical  cooperation  in  a 
wholly  Christian  but  also  wholly  unecclesiastical  work, 
with  men  of  very  widely  different  religious  opinions,  I 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  269 

was  unconsciously  preparing  for  what  later  was  to  be  my 
life-work  as  the  editor  of  a  journal  which  was,  in  the 
thought  of  its  founders,  the  more  supremely  Christian 
because  it  was  wholly  free  from  every  form  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal control. 

III.  The  reader  will  recall  that  the  constitution  of  the 
united  society  provided  that  *'no  schools  or  supply 
depots  shall  be  maintained  from  the  benefits  of  which 
any  shall  be  excluded  because  of  color."  This  provision 
early  brought  before  the  Commission  a  serious  problem. 
Our  general  agent  in  North  Carolina  wrote  us  as  early  as 
March,  1866,  that  "it  is  very  desirable  to  have  schools 
in  large  cities  for  blacks  and  whites  separately,  and  that 
these  latter  schools  should  be  supported  by  the  same 
benevolent  body  that  sustains  the  former."  I  wrote  in 
reply  a  letter  which  was  read  to  and  approved  by  the 
executive  committee,  in  which  I  stated  that  there  would 
be  no  attempt  to  prevent  children  going  to  schools  of 
their  own  choice,  "each  choosing  mainly  companions  of 
their  own  race";  but  that  no  pupil  could  be  excluded 
from  one  of  our  schools  because  of  his  color;  and  in  my 
letter  I  affirmed  that  this  principle  could  not  be  departed 
from,  both  because  it  was  inherently  right  —  "to  exclude 
a  child  from  a  free  school  because  he  is  either  white  or 
black  is  inherently  wrong"  —  and  because  the  principle 
had  been  agreed  upon  as  a  basis  for  the  united  organiza- 
tion, and,  "thus  adopted  as  a  compact,  honor  requires 
that  it  should  be  carried  out  in  the  same  spirit  in  which 
it  was  conceived." 

About  the  same  time  I  sent  to  our  agents  in  the  South 
a  circular  letter  asking  a  number  of  questions  for  the  pur- 
pose of  getting  accurate  information  for  the  executive 
committee.  Among  them  was  the  question:  "Is  there 
any  probability  of  the  poor  whites,  adults  or  children. 


270  REMINISCENCES 

consenting  to  come  to  school  with  colored  pupils?  Do 
you  know  of  any  case  where  the  experiment  of  a  free 
school,  open  to  all,  has  been  fairly  tried,  and,  if  so,  what 
has  been  the  result?"  The  reply  from  General  Clinton 
B.  risk  was  typical  of  the  replies  received  from  all  our 
correspondents.  He  said:  "You  cannot  gather  the 
whites  and  blacks  into  the  same  school.  Both  races 
rebel  against  it.  Separate  schools  under  the  same  organi- 
zation can  be  successfully  conducted.  I  know  of  no  suc- 
cessful experiment  of  mixing  them  in  the  same  school. 
I  do  know  of  signal  failure."  Practically  all  the  other 
replies  were  to  the  same  effect,  and  some  of  them  indi- 
cated that  the  opposition  to  co-education  came  from  the 
blacks  as  well  as  the  whites.  These  letters  were  among 
the  first  influences  to  change  my  opinion  respecting  the 
desirability  of  the  co-education  of  the  races.  These  are 
reminiscences,  not  political  philosophy;  but  it  is  legiti- 
mate to  take  this  occasion  to  say  that  I  no  longer  think  it 
is  inherently  right  that  no  one  should  be  excluded  from  a 
school  because  of  his  color.  Co-education  of  the  races, 
like  co-education  of  the  sexes,  is  simply  a  question  of 
expediency;  and  experience  early  demonstrated  that  it 
was  not  expedient  to  attempt  co-education  of  the  races 
in  the  Southern  States.  Justice  demands  that  equal  — 
not  necessarily  identical  —  educational  advantages  be 
offered  to  both  races  and  to  both  sexes.  It  does  not  de- 
mand that  they  should  be  afforded  under  the  same 
roof. 

From  the  very  outset  of  our  work  we  had  succeeded  in 
putting  ourselves  in  connection  with  the  educational  au- 
thorities, and  had  found  warmly  welcomed  by  them  our 
proposed  cooperation  in  the  endeavor  to  organize  ef- 
ficient pubHc  schools  under  non-sectarian,  non-partisan, 
and  non-sectional  educational  leaders.     In  accordance 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  271 

with  this  policy,  and  at  the  request  of  Southern  educa- 
tional authorities,  two  graduates  of  Yale  University  were 
sent  to  Nashville,  Tennessee,  another  to  Marysville, 
Tennessee,  a  fourth  to  Knoxville,  and  one  instructor  at 
Yale  to  North  Carolina,  to  aid  in  estabhshing  public 
schools  in  those  localities.  Other  schools,  attended  ex- 
clusively by  white  children,  were  opened  and  maintained 
at  various  points  and  were  eventually  incorporated  in  the 
public  school  system  of  the  State,  and  had,  I  think,  some 
influence  both  in  promoting  and  in  shaping  such  a  system. 
The  work  thus  initiated  by  the  Freedmen's  Union 
Commission  was  gradually  taken  up  and  carried  on  by 
other  agencies.  The  churches  were  not  slow  to  see  in  the 
condition  of  the  freedmen  an  opportunity  and  a  call  to 
duty.  With  a  breadth  of  view  before  too  little  known 
in  our  missionary  operations,  the  churches  recognized 
that  education  is  as  essential  as  evangelization,  and  be- 
gan the  establishment  of  schools  for  the  freedmen.  Freed- 
men's branches  were  organized  in  connection  with  the 
various  church  missionary  boards.  The  American  Mis- 
sionary Association,  which  had  been  organized  as  a  pro- 
test against  the  apathy  on  the  slavery  question  of  the 
older  missionary  societies,  began  to  devote  its  missionary 
work  largely  to  the  evangelization  and  education  of  the 
freedmen.  Simultaneously  the  Southern  States  began 
the  organization  of  public  school  systems,  and  in  these 
public  schools  provided  for  the  education  of  both  races, 
though  always  in  different  schools.  Men  of  large  wealth 
and  large  views  —  and  the  two  do  not  always  go  together 
—  recognized  the  Nation's  need,  and  in  successive  gifts 
made  provision  for  it.  In  1867-68  George  Peabody  es- 
tablished a  fund  of  three  and  a  half  million  dollars  to  be 
devoted  to  education  in  the  South;  in  1882  John  F. 
Slater  gave  a  million,  and  in  1888  Daniel  Hand  a  million, 


272  REMINISCENCES 

for  the  education  of  the  negroes  in  the  South;  and  in 
1902  John  D.  Rockefeller  created  a  fund  of  one  million, 
later  increased  to  something  over  fifty  millions,  for  edu- 
cational uses  throughout  the  United  States,  including, 
of  course,  the  Southern  States.  A  number  of  smaller 
funds  have  been  at  various  times  created  for  the  same 
or  similar  purposes. 

In  April,  1869,  the  executive  committee  of  the  Ameri- 
can Freedmen's  Union  Commission  reached  the  conclu- 
sion that  other  agencies  were  carrying  on  so  effectively 
the  work  for  which  the  Commission  had  been  called  into 
being,  that  it  was  no  longer  either  necessary  or  expedient 
to  continue  its  work,  and  on  the  1st  of  July  it  ceased  to 
exist,  "not,"  as  declared  in  its  official  announcement, 
"because  the  work  of  aiding  in  the  education  of  the  f reed- 
men  will  then  be  finished,  but  because  the  existence  of  a 
national  organization  for  this  purpose  will  have  ceased  to 
be  either  necessary  or  expedient.  .  .  ." 

My  share  in  the  educational  and  moral  reconstruction 
of  the  South  was  inconspicuous  and  relatively  insignifi- 
cant. But  I  could  not  tell  the  story  of  my  life  and  omit 
from  it  some  account  of  this  share  in  one  of  the  great 
world  movements  of  history.  I  do  not  know  where  its 
parallel  is  to  be  found.  A  conquered  country  not  only 
accepts  without  sullenness  the  results  of  war,  but  to  re- 
building its  civilization  in  substantial  harmony  with  that 
of  its  victor  devotes  the  same  persistent  courage  with 
which  it  fought  the  representatives  of  that  civilization 
on  the  field  of  battle.  And  the  victor  not  only  takes  no 
life  as  a  penalty  for  four  years  of  resistance  to  its  author- 
ity, but  devotes  uncalculated  millions  of  dollars  to  re- 
pairing the  wastes  which  war  had  caused  and  to  helping 
its  conquered  foe  to  rival  its  conqueror  in  all  that  makes 
the  State  truly  great  and  its  people  truly  prosperous. 


LYMAX   ABBOTT 
From  a  pliotograph  taken  in  the  later  sixties 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  273 

At  the  close  of  the  war  the  laws  agamst  negro  schools 
had  been  abolished  by  emancipation  and  some  negro 
schools  had  been  established,  but  a  feeling  against  the 
education  of  the  negro  dominated  the  South.  When  the 
protection  of  the  army  was  withdrawn,  school-houses 
were  in  several  instances  burned  and  school-teachers 
mobbed  and  driven  away.  When  open  violence  was 
not  practiced,  the  "nigger  teachers"  were  ostracized. 
They  generally  found  it  difficult,  often  impossible,  to 
secure  board  in  reputable  white  families.  Nor  was  this 
prejudice  confined  to  the  South.  One  of  the  early  freed- 
men  societies  of  the  North  was  rent  asunder  by  the  unwill- 
ingness of  a  part  of  its  members  to  cooperate  in  any 
movement  looking  to  the  education  of  the  negro,  though 
they  were  willing  to  provide  him  with  food  and  clothing. 
The  introduction  of  a  public  school  system  for  the  whites 
met  also  at  first  with  serious  opposition  from  four  sources : 
political  opposition,  upon  the  ground  that  it  is  not  the 
function  of  a  State  to  carry  on  the  work  of  education; 
ecclesiastical  opposition,  on  the  ground  that  the  State 
can  furnish  only  secular  education  and  education  should 
be  religious;  social  opposition,  not  the  less  powerful  be- 
cause not  clearly  expressed,  against  any  attempt  to  edu- 
cate the  lower  classes  lest  it  should  unfit  them  for  their 
position;  and,  finally,  economic  opposition,  based  on 
the  poverty  of  the  South  and  its  real  or  fancied  inability 
to  tax  itself  for  school  purposes.  To  these  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  a  new  educational  system  were  added  the 
facts  that  the  old  educational  system  had  been  over- 
thrown by  the  war,  the  school  buildings  destroyed,  the 
school  endowments  lost,  and  in  many  instances  the  best 
teachers  and  educational  leaders  had  fallen  on  the  field 
or  died  in  hospitals. 

Forty  years  have  passed  since  then.    To-day  there  is 


274  REMINISCENCES 

not  a  single  Southern  State  which  has  not  a, public  school 
system,  nor  a  single  State  which  does  not  provide  for  the 
education  of  both  races.  This  has  been  done  voluntarily 
and  without  aid  from  the  Federal  Government.  My 
experience  leads  me  to  the  conviction  that  a  person 
visiting  any  Southern  community  and  asking  to  see  the 
schools  will  be  taken  by  his  Southern  host  to  schools  for 
the  negroes  as  well  as  to  the  schools  for  the  whites,  and 
will  be  shown  the  one  with  as  much  pride  and  pleasure  as 
the  other.  I  recall  several  such  instances  in  my  own  ex- 
perience. Notable  among  them  is  one  in  which  I  was 
taken  by  a  Southern  gentleman  in  Nashville  to  see  its 
two  great  universities  —  Vanderbilt  University  for  the 
whites,  risk  University  for  the  negroes  —  both  re- 
garded with  pride  as  the  two  great  educational  institu- 
tions of  the  city. 

This  work  has  been  carried  on  in  spite  of  Southern 
prejudice,  and  also  in  spite  of  Northern  narrowness.  In 
March,  1866,  I  wrote:  "Though  the  Southern  States 
accept  liberty,  they  repudiate  equality,  and  still  provide 
in  their  laws,  not  only  a  different  political  status,  but 
different  laws  and  penalties  for  colored  men,  because  of 
their  color.  If  we  wish  to  secure  the  abolition  of  this  dis- 
tinction from  our  laws,  we  cannot  maintain  it  in  our  chari- 
ties. Our  exclusive  recognition  of  the  freedmen  as  a 
separate  class  confirms  this  injurious  distinction  in  spite 
of  ourselves."  History  has,  I  think,  confirmed  the  justice 
of  this  statement.  Our  missionary  societies,  by  going 
into  the  South  almost  exclusively  as  the  friends  of  the 
freedmen,  have  unconsciously  and  unintentionally  done 
not  a  little  to  develop  hostility  to  the  freedmen.  But  in 
spite  of  prejudices,  both  North  and  South,  which  for 
partisan  purposes  political  journals  have  sometimes  exag- 
gerated and  political  demagogues  have  sometimes  stimu- 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  275 

lated,  there  is  a  new  South,  and,  thanks  to  a  band  of 
patriots  in  both  North  and  South,  a  new  Union.  I  have 
had  some  advantages  for  gauging  the  sentiment  of  the 
country.  East  and  West,  North  and  South,  both  by  travel 
and  by  correspondence.  And  it  is  beyond  all  question 
that  not  only  the  spirit  of  nationality,  but  the  spirit  of 
a  brotherhood  overleaping  all  chasms  of  section  and  of 
race,  unites  this  heterogeneous  people  in  one  Nation  as 
it  was  never  united  before.  I  lay  down  my  pen  and 
some  of  the  great  leaders  in  this  movement  for  the 
kingdom  of  God  pass  before  me;  would  that  I  could 
paint  their  miniatures  for  readers  who  have  never 
known  them! 

General  O.  O.  Howard,  the  most  maligned  and  most 
misinterpreted  of  men;  his  work  as  head  of  the  Freed- 
men's  Bureau  twice  investigated,  once  by  a  committee 
of  the  House  of  Representatives,  once  by  a  court  martial 
on  which  sat  such  men  as  Generals  Sherman  and 
McDowell — each  time  triumphantly  vindicated;  a  soldier 
who  could  no  more  think  of  deserting  his  post  at  the  head 
of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau  so  long  as  there  was  duty  to 
be  done  and  humanity  to  be  served  than  he  could  think 
of  deserting  his  post  in  time  of  battle  so  long  as  there  were 
enemies  to  his  country  to  be  fought,  and  who  bore  the 
wounds  inflicted  on  his  good  name  in  the  one  field  as 
bravely  as  those  inflicted  on  his  body  in  the  other. 

General  Armstrong,  missionary,  soldier,  philanthro- 
pist, educator,  who,  out  of  a  camp  of  shiftless,  helpless 
negroes,  created  what  his  successor  —  Dr.  H.  B.  Frissell 
• —  has  developed  into  the  greatest  industrial  school  in 
America.  It  would  be  well  if  every  State  in  the  Union 
could  possess  an  institution  of  like  spirit,  purpose,  and 
equipment  for  the  education  of  its  youth  of  all  races. 

Booker  T.  Washington,  who  has  done  more  to  inter- 


276  REMINISCENCES 

pret  the  South  to  the  North  and  the  North  to  the  South, 
the  white  man  to  the  black  man  and  the  black  man  to  the 
white  man,  than  any  other  American,  and  whom  the 
future  will  place  as  a  leader  of  his  race  in  the  same  rank 
with  the  other  great  racial  leaders  of  human  history. 

Dr.  Charles  D.  Mclver,  whose  whirlwind  campaign 
for  popular  education  in  North  Carolina,  everywhere  con- 
verting apathy  into  enthusiasm,  had  aU  the  fervor  of  a 
Methodist  evangelism,  and  left  behind  it  a  permanence 
in  result  which  Methodist  evangelism  does  not  always 
secure. 

General  Clinton  B.  Fisk,  whose  tenacity  of  purpose, 
understanding  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and  in- 
exhaustible humor  made  him  equally  irresistible  as  a 
combatant  and  as  a  peacemaker. 

Dr.  J.  L.  M.  Curry,  who  combined  the  eloquence  of  a 
pulpit  orator,  the  courage  of  a  Southern  soldier,  and  the 
practical  knowledge  of  an  experienced  politician,  and 
devoted  them  all  to  burning  into  the  hearts  of  his  country- 
men the  truth  that  "ignorance  is  never  a  cure  for  any- 
thing." 

Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  who  withdrew  from  the  min- 
istry because  he  could  better  minister  to  the  people  out 
of  the  pulpit  than  in  it,  and  whose  pubHshed  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Old  South  and  the  New  is  the  work  of  one  who 
was  at  once  a  prophet,  a  reformer,  and  a  historian. 

Robert  C.  Ogden,  more  than  a  merchant  prince  —  a 
merchant  commoner — who  employed  in  using  his  wealth 
the  same  diligence  which  he  employed  in  acquiring  it; 
and  by  his  combined  tact  and  beneficence  brought  North 
and  South  together  in  a  joint  educational  campaign 
equally  beneficial  to  both  sections  and  to  both  races. 

President  Edwin  Anderson  Alderman,  of  Virginia, 
Chancellor  Walter  Barnard  Hill,  of  Georgia,  and  Chan- 


RECONSTRUCTION:  ITS  SOLUTION  277 

cellor  James  Hampton  Kirkland,  of  Tennessee,  who  in 
their  presidential  offices  have  set  an  example  of  the 
higher  and  broader  education  for  the  entire  South  to 
emulate,  and  who  have  cooperated  with  the  presidents 
of  Northern  universities  to  make  exile  from  America  no 
longer  necessary  for  the  highest  and  best  education. 

To  know  these  men  and  such  as  these  has  been  an 
education,  to  be  associated  with  them  has  been  an  in- 
spiration, and  to  be  counted  by  them  as  their  friend  is 
to  be  enrolled  in  America's  legion  of  honor. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

DISAPPOINTMENT 

IN  the  winter  of  1866  an  independent  Methodist 
church  occupied  a  substantial  though  unpretentious 
edifice  in  Forty-first  Street,  New  York  City,  just 
west  of  Sixth  Avenue.  In  the  rear  of  the  church  was 
what  might  have  served  for  a  convenient  parish  house, 
though  it  was  before  the  days  of  the  parish  house.  The 
minister  had  resigned,  and  the  church  was  without  a 
pastor.  One  Sunday,  in  the  latter  part  of  December, 
1865,  I  was  invited  to  preach  in  this  church,  and  the 
following  week  a  committee  called  on  me  to  ask  if  I  would 
consider  a  call  to  become  the  pastor.  At  almost  the 
same  time  there  came  to  me  a  call  to  one  of  the  leading 
Congregational  churches  of  Portland,  Maine. 

I  had  no  difficulty  in  determining  that  I  would  accept 
one  or  the  other  of  these  calls.  I  was  weary  of  the  ad- 
ministrative details  of  the  office;  weary  of  the  itineraries 
which  continually  took  me  away  from  home;  weary  of 
the  stress  of  business  which  left  me  no  time  for  study, 
still  less  for  reading  and  reflection;  weary,  too,  of  leaving 
my  wife  with  the  whole  care  of  the  children,  a  narrow 
income,  and  often  the  added  duty  which  she  had  as- 
sumed of  looking  after  my  correspondence  in  my  ab- 
sences. 

Perhaps  I  may  interject  here  the  statement  that, 
having  been  a  lawyer,  an  author,  an  editor,  a  secretary, 
and  a  pastor,  there  is  no  profession  which  has  for  me  so 


DISAPPOINTMENT  279 

many  attractions  as  the  pastorate.  The  minister  has 
more  intimate  personal  friends  than  the  lawyer,  the 
doctor,  or  the  business  man;  he  deals  with  men  and 
women  usually  when  in  their  best  moods;  he  preaches  to 
an  audience  which  is  friendly  and  sympathetic  and 
which  desires  a  message  if  he  has  one  to  give;  he  has,  or 
can  have  if  he  will,  time  and  opportunity  for  study  of 
the  most  fundamental  themes,  those  which  concern  the 
building  of  character,  both  of  the  individual  and  of 
society;  and  if  he  has  any  personal  consciousness  of 
divine  companionship,  he  has  in  that  consciousness  the 
greatest  gift  to  bestow  upon  his  friends  which  it  is  pos- 
sible for  one  soul  to  bestow  upon  another.  I  wanted  to 
get  back  into  the  ministry. 

Which  of  these  two  calls  to  accept  was  a  much  more 
difficult  question.  The  Portland  church  presented 
strong  attractions.  Portland  is  one  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful cities  in  the  country  —  I  am  inclined  to  think  quite 
the  most  beautiful,  for  situation,  in  New  England.  It  is 
the  commercial  capital  of  Maine,  and  Maine  was  dear 
to  us  both :  it  was  the  State  in  which  my  wife  was  born 
and  in  which  my  boyhood  was  spent,  and  in  it  we  had 
many  friends  and  not  a  few  relatives.  The  church  was 
financially  strong,  with  a  cultured  congregation,  and  it 
assured  me  an  adequate  income,  opportunity  for  quiet 
study,  and  the  possibilities  of  an  influence  throughout 
the  State  limited  only  by  my  abilities. 

But  my  readers  will  already  have  discovered  that  I 
am  naturally  ambitious;  that  I  have  some  pioneer  blood 
in  me;  that  new  experiments  attract  me,  and  difficulties 
to  be  overcome  have  for  me  a  peculiar  fascination. 
These  were  the  attractions  of  the  New  York  church. 
It  had  neither  financial  nor  social  strength.  Its  ecclesiasti- 
cal independence  was  fatal  to  its  existence;  it  must  affili- 


280  REMINISCENCES 

ate  itself  with  some  Protestant  denomination.  Its  loca- 
tion was  inadvisable  for  a  Congregational  church;  for 
it  was  but  seven  blocks  away  from  the  only  really  strong 
Congregational  church  in  the  city  —  the  Broadway  Tab- 
ernacle. Its  new  pastor  must  gather  a  congregation  strong 
enough  to  move  to  a  more  favorable  spot  and  build 
anew.  In  short,  the  Portland  church  was  a  full-grown 
man  inviting  me  to  unite  with  it  in  carrying  on  a  work 
already  organized;  the  New  York  church  was  an  infant 
in  its  cradle,  asking  me  to  come  and  help  it  grow  into 
manhood  and  organize  and  develop  a  man's  work.  In 
such  crises  my  wife  always  left  to  me  the  decision  of  the 
question.  An  expression  of  her  wish  would  have  been 
conclusive;  therefore  she  did  not  express  a  wish.  With 
much  hesitation,  and  not  without  some  misgiving,  I 
chose  the  more  difficult  undertaking.  I  was  rather 
amused  to  read  the  next  week  in  a  Portland  paper  that  I 
had  declined  the  call  to  Portland  in  order  to  accept  a 
call  "somewhere  else,  where  they  are  building  a  large 
new  church  in  a  great  metropolis."  Whether  the  editor 
was  ever  undeceived  I  do  not  know;  I  made  no  effort  to 
undeceive  him.  For  very  early  I  had  made  it  a  rule  of 
my  life  when  accused  not  to  undertake  any  self-defense, 
and  when  misreported  not  to  make  corrections;  to  give 
myself  unreservedly  to  my  work  and  leave  my  reputa- 
tion to  take  care  of  itself.  The  study  of  the  Gospels  made 
it  clear  to  me  that  this  was  habitually  the  course  of  my 
Master,  and  I  followed  the  example  which  he  set. 

I  accepted  the  call  of  the  New  York  church  on  two 
conditions:  it  was  to  become  a  Congregational  church; 
and  it  was,  first,  to  call  a  Council  of  Congregational 
churches  to  determine  whether  it  was  wise  to  attempt 
the  organization  of  a  new  Congregational  church  with 
this  nucleus.   Meanwhile  I  continued  my  work  as  secre- 


DISAPPOINTMENT  >  281 

tary  of  the  Freedmen's  Union  Commission.  The  Council 
was  called.  Nearly  all  the  important  churches  of  New 
York  and  Brooklyn  were  represented.  The  facts  were 
laid  before  this  body.  It  appeared  that  there  was  here 
a  church  membership  of  eighty,  all  of  whom  were  favor- 
able to  the  new  enterprise,  and  a  church  property  valued 
at  forty  thousand  dollars,  with  a  debt  of  twelve  thousand 
dollars.  Of  this  debt  nine  thousand  dollars  was  secured 
by  a  mortgage  on  the  property,  three  thousand  dollars 
was  a  floating  indebtedness.  To  get  a  church  property 
worth  forty  thousand  dollars  for  twelve  thousand 
dollars  seemed  to  the  Council  a  good  business  proposition 
for  the  denomination. 

There  were  only  two  Congregational  churches  in 
New  York  City  (which  then  did  not  include  Brooklyn) 
—  the  Broadway  Tabernacle,  on  the  corner  of  Thirty- 
fourth  Street  and  Broadway,  and  the  Pilgrim  Congrega- 
tional Church  in  Harlem,  some  four  or  five  miles  away. 
It  seemed  to  the  Council  that  in  the  great  and  growing 
city  of  New  York  there  were  room  and  work  for  another 
church  of  the  Puritan  faith  and  order,  and  the  Council 
recommended  that  the  church  be  reorganized  as  a  Con- 
gregational church.  At  the  same  time  it  voted  that  "it 
is  expedient  that  the  whole  of  the  debt  upon  this  society 
(twelve  thousand  dollars)  be  immediately  raised,  and 
that  a  committee  be  appointed  to  solicit  subscriptions 
for  the  same."  I  was  ignorant  of  the  meaning  of  ec- 
clesiastical resolves  and  thought  that  the  money  was 
as  good  as  secured.  I  found  that  all  the  resolution 
really  meant  was  that  I  might  go  about  among  the 
churches  with  this  resolution  as  an  indorsement  and  get 
what  money  I  could.  I  got  three  thousand  dollars  and 
paid  off  the  floating  debt  and  then  stopped  my  canvass- 
ing.  If  I  had  been  a  wise  man,  I  should  have  called  the 


282  REMINISCENCES 

committee  together  and  said  to  them:  "Gentlemen,  it 
is  for  you,  on  behalf  of  the  denomination,  to  raise  this 
money.  If  it  is  not  raised,  I  shall  go  no  further  in  this 
enterprise."    But  I  was  not  wise. 

In  this  collecting  tour  I  met  with  one  curious  and 
somewhat  instructive  incident.  Among  the  names  given 
me  was  that  of  a  wholesale  and  retail  liquor  dealer  on 
South  Street.  For  readers  not  familiar  with  New  York 
City  it  should  be  said  that  South  Street  borders  the 
East  River,  and  that  the  saloons  on  this  street  are  the 
drinking-places  of  sailors  and  longshoremen.  I  went  in, 
inquired  at  the  bar  for  the  proprietor,  was  directed  up- 
stairs, found  him  in  his  office,  stated  my  case,  and  got  a 
subscription  for  fifty  or  a  hundred  dollars  —  I  forget 
which.  He  would  have  been  glad,  he  said,  to  give  me 
more,  but  he  was  supporting  two  or  three  young  men 
who  were  studying  for  the  ministry.  Curious  are  the 
contradictions  in  human  nature.  I  took  his  contribu- 
tion without  hesitation  and  was  sorry  it  was  not  more. 
I  had  not  then,  as  I  have  not  since,  learned  that  it  is 
wrong  to  take  from  the  Master's  enemies  money  for  the 
Master's  work. 

In  due  time  the  floating  debt  of  the  church  was  paid, 
the  church  was  reorganized,  taking  the  name  of  the 
"New  England  Church,"  and  I  was  installed  as  its 
pastor.  It  was  not  until  April,  1867,  a  year  and  three 
months  after  the  first  calling  of  the  Congregational  Coun- 
cil, that  the  installation  took  place.  At  this  time  the 
pew  rents  had  more  than  doubled,  though  they  were 
still  inadequate  to  meet  current  expenses;  the  church 
membership  had  grown  from  eighty  to  one  hundred  and 
twenty;  my  uncle  Gorham,  who  had  given  up  his  school 
in  New  York  City,  had  put  his  library  of  fifteen  hundred 
volumes  at  my  disposal,  and  a  circulating  library  had 


DISAPPOINTMENT  283 

been  opened,  into  whicli  one  thousand  volumes  had  been 
put;  the  Sunday-School  had  been  reorganized  and  in- 
creased in  numbers,  and  a  Young  People's  Social  Union 
of  upward  of  eighty  members  had  been  formed. 

This  would  have  been  an  encouraging  record  for  a 
church  in  a  growing  town  or  a  growing  section  of  the 
city.  In  Brooklyn  four  prosperous  Congregational 
churches  had  been  developed  out  of  a  less  promising 
beginning.  But  they  had  been  situated  in  rapidly  grow- 
ing sections,  and  Plymouth  Church  (Mr.  Beecher's) 
and  the  Church  of  the  Pilgrims  (Dr.  Storrs')  had  both 
encouraged  such  of  their  own  members  as  were  residing 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  new  churches  to  transfer 
thither  their  membership.  These  churches  were  indeed, 
in  their  beginning,  almost  colonies  of  the  older  churches. 
The  New  England  Church  was  not  in  a  growing  sec- 
tion; and  it  was  the  avowed  policy  of  Dr.  Thompson,  the 
pastor  of  the  Broadway  Tabernacle,  our  nearest  Con- 
gregational neighbor,  to  keep  one  large  Congregational 
church  in  the  metropolis  rather  than  to  colonize  at  the 
hazard  of  weakening  that  church.  At  the  end  of  two 
more  years  a  hundred  and  twenty  members  had  been 
added  to  the  church.  But  they  had  not  brought  into  it 
either  social  prestige  or  large  financial  resources,  and 
they  had  not  as  their  pastor  a  preacher  who  had  the  elo- 
quence to  attract  a  non-church-going  congregation. 

The  experiences  of  a  struggling  parish  are  not  especi- 
ally interesting  reading.  A  few  incidents  only  are  worth 
narrating  here. 

My  church  salary  was  small,  but  it  enabled  me  to 
make  some  reduction  in  my  salary  as  secretary  of  the 
Freedmen's  Union  Commission,  an  office  which  I  con- 
tinued to  fill  during  the  whole  period  treated  of  in  this 
chapter,  and  I  threw  upon  assistants  in  the  office  details 


284  REMINISCENCES 

of  administration  which  they  could  attend  to  at  least 
as  well  as,  and  probably  much  better  than,  I  could.  After 
my  summer  vacation  in  August,  1866,  I  wrote  to  my 
wife,  who  remained  in  the  country  with  the  children: 
"When  I  first  came  back,  Mr.  Shaw  and  Mr.  McKim 
[associated  with  me  in  the  Commission]  came  to  me  and 
suggested  the  propriety  of  dispensing  with  either  Mr. 

R or  Mr.  K .    There  was  nothing  for  them 

to  do.  Since  my  return  to  the  office,  though  I  am  at  the 
office  very  little,  I  keep  them  both  busy.  I  do  not  think 
either  has  had  much  leisure.  And  now  I  have  called  in 
the  service  of  a  third."  There  are  two  characteristically 
opposite  rules  of  action :  one.  If  you  want  anything  done, 
do  it  yourself;  the  other,  Never  do  yourself  what  you 
can  get  any  one  else  to  do.  The  latter  has  throughout 
my  life,  whether  as  secretary,  editor,  or  pastor,  been  my 
rule;  and  it  has  always  left  me  enough  to  do. 

My  journeys  for  the  Commission  were  continued, 
but  were  timed  so  as  not  to  interfere,  except  on  rare  oc- 
casions, with  my  Sunday  duties  at  the  church.  I  re- 
vived the  habit,  formed  first  at  Farmington  and  con- 
tinued at  Terre  Haute,  of  spending  the  week  in  courses 
of  study,  and  basing  my  sermons  on  such  general  prepa- 
rations. My  sermons  were  partly  written  and  partly 
extemporized;  but  the  writing  was  generally  done  at  a 
single  sitting.  The  studies  in  the  life  of  Christ  which 
I  had  pursued  in  Terre  Haute  I  resumed.  I  have  al- 
ways regarded  books  as  the  necessary  tools  of  my  pro- 
fession; had  invested  in  them  with  some  liberality  in 
Terre  Haute,  and  now  began  again  to  purchase,  concen- 
trating my  purchases  almost  exclusively  upon  books 
relating  to  Christ's  life  or  to  the  interpretation  of  the 
New  Testament. 

In  November,  1868,  I  was  able  to  make  a  contract 


DISAPPOINTMENT  285 

with  Harper  &  Brothers  to  prepare  every  month  five  or 
six  pages  of  book  reviews  for  the  Literary  Department 
of  their  "Monthly  Magazine,"  an  arrangement  which  in- 
sured me  a  good  supply  of  modern  American  publications 
of  importance.  My  wife  read  the  novels,  and  on  her 
reports  I  based  my  reviews  of  the  current  fiction.  At 
the  same  time  I  contracted  with  the  same  house  to 
prepare  for  publication  a  "Life  of  Christ,"  and  set  my- 
self at  once  to  the  task  of  preparation.  It  was  about  this 
time,  I  judge,  that  I  formed  the  habit,  which  I  kept 
up,  with  some  intermissions,  for  nearly  twenty  years,  of 
rising  about  daybreak,  in  winter  much  earlier,  making 
myself  a  cup  of  coffee,  and,  with  this  and  a  roll,  work- 
ing for  a  couple  of  hours  before  the  family  breakfast. 
At  the  same  time  I  cut  off  all  reading  and  writing  at  night, 
keeping  my  evenings  free  for  social  and  public  engage- 
ments, with  an  occasional  evening  at  home  with  my 
wife  and  children.  My  experience  is  that  using  the  eyes 
in  the  early  morning  after  a  night's  rest  is  better  than 
using  them  in  the  evening  after  a  day's  work.  This  also 
enabled  me  to  get  a  considerable  amount  of  literary 
work  done  in  the  course  of  a  year,  and  have  the  daylight 
hours  free  for  parish  and  ojBBce  duties. 

I  did  not  confine  myself,  however,  in  my  studies  to 
the  New  Testament  nor  to  the  miscellaneous  reading 
involved  in  my  work  as  a  reviewer.  I  find  from  my  cor- 
respondence that  in  1866 1  was  studying  Herbert  Spencer, 
but  I  do  not  find  any  indication  that  I  was  studying 
either  Darwin  or  Huxley;  probably  not,  for  my  interest 
was  primarily  in  philosophy,  only  incidentally  and 
indirectly  in  science.  As  my  boyhood's  study  of  Jona- 
than Edwards  had  established  my  faith  in  the  freedom 
of  the  will,  so  my  study  of  Herbert  Spencer  confirmed 
my  rejection  of  the  rationalistic  philosophy  and  my  ac- 


286  REMINISCENCES 

ceptance  of  the  philosophy  to  which  in  recent  years 
Rudolf  Eucken  has  given  such  splendid  interpretation. 
It  has  interested  me  to  find,  in  a  letter  written  to  my 
wife  in  1866,  a  statement  of  that  philosophy  in  almost 
the  very  words  in  which  Eucken  has  stated  it.  In  this 
letter  to  her  I  defined  the  subject  of  one  of  my  sermons 
in  the  following  words:  "We  are  not  to  know  God  by 
studying  about  him,  but  by  experiencing  him,"  And 
I  added:  "God  is  to  be  known  through  the  spiritual 
faculties,  not  through  the  intellectual  faculties.  The 
latter  do  not  give  a  knowledge  of  God,  but  only  a  knowl- 
edge of  truths  about  him." 

I  did  not  confine  myself  to  a  study  of  books.  The  same 
desire  for  first-hand  knowledge  which  had  sent  me  to 
Tennessee  and  Virginia  to  study  the  conditions  in  the 
South  before  beginning  my  work  in  the  Union  Com- 
mission sent  me  into  some  of  the  worst  wards  in  New 
York  City  to  acquaint  myself  with  social  conditions  in 
the  metropolis.  In  a  letter  to  "The  Congregationalist," 
of  Boston,  of  which  I  was  the  New  York  correspondent, 
I  described  the  saloon  conditions  in  New  York  City  prior 
to  the  enactment  of  the  Excise  Law  of  1866.  As  described 
in  that  communication  they  now  seem  to  me  almost  in- 
credible. But  that  description  was  based  on  a  careful 
study,  partly  of  oflScial  documents,  partly  of  actual  con- 
ditions ascertained  by  a  personal  investigation.  Upon 
it  the  following  paragraph  is  based. 

The  License  Law  of  the  State  legally  applied  to  the 
city,  but  it  was  practically  inapplicable  and  actually 
inoperative.  Out  of  nearly  ten  thousand  retail  dealers 
only  four  hundred  went  through  the  form  of  obtaining 
a  license.  The  rest  were  absolutely  free.  There  was  no 
power  under  the  law  to  limit  the  number  of  saloons. 
One  ward  contained  a  liquor  shop  to  every  forty-seven 


DISAPPOINTMENT  287 

persons,  and  one  of  the  best  wards  in  the  city  contained 
one  saloon  to  every  one  hundred  and  thirty-one  persons. 
There  was  no  power  to  determine  by  whom  the  traffic 
should  be  carried  on,  nor  to  close  disorderly  places,  nor 
to  regulate  the  times  of  opening  and  closing.  Not  a 
few  saloons  were  open  for  business  every  day  in  the 
year  and  every  hour  in  the  day.  The  poorer  classes  of 
groceries  were,  generally,  also  liquor  saloons,  where  a 
great  pretense  of  boxes  and  barrels  was  made  to  hide  an 
unpretentious  but  busy  bar.  There  wives  of  the  poorer 
classes  used  to  gossip  and  learned,  insensibly,  to  drink, 
astounding  their  husbands  by  the  quantity  of  groceries 
consumed  by  the  family  as  indicated  by  the  weekly 
bill.  In  over  two  hundred  concert  saloons  women  and 
music  added  to  the  attractiveness  of  the  bar,  and  about 
twelve  hundred  barmaids  and  waitresses  were  busy 
every  night,  and  busiest  of  all  Sunday  evenings. 
The  Excise  Law  of  May,  1866,  was  enacted  to  remedy 
some  of  these  conditions.  It  gave  to  the  metropolitan 
Board  of  Police  the  powers  of  an  Excise  Board;  placed 
the  whole  retail  liquor  traffic  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn 
under  their  oversight,  and  absolutely  prohibited  all  sale 
of  liquor  except  by  such  persons  as  the  Excise  Board, 
thus  constituted,  should  license.  Among  other  regula- 
tions it  compelled  the  concert  saloons  to  choose  between 
wine  and  women.  Some  of  them  dismissed  the  women 
and  retained  the  wine,  others  retained  the  women  and 
substituted  tea  and  coffee  for  the  wine,  while  many  of 
them  were  compelled  to  discontinue  altogether. 

In  1868  a  vigorous  attempt  was  made  to  repeal  this 
law  and  reinstate  the  old  conditions  of  free  liquor.  The 
ministers  were  requested  to  preach  upon  the  subject. 
To  prepare  myself,  I  resolved  to  make  a  visit,  under  the 
guidance  of  a  policeman,  to  some  of  the  quarters  most 


288  REMINISCENCES 

affected.  The  description  which  follows  I  condense  from 
an  account  which  I  wrote  at  the  time  for  the  New  York 
"Independent." 

My  guide  first  takes  me  to  a  concert  hall,  where  "two 
melancholy  fiddlers,  perched  up  in  one  corner,  their  heads 
against  the  ceiling,  are  torturing  two  song  victims  that 
protest  with  great  agony  against  their  tormentors' 
treatment,"  and  "half  a  dozen  miserable-looking  hags 
and  half  a  dozen  more  coarse-looking  Irish  girls,  dressed 
in  second-hand  tawdry  garments  of  a  third-rate  theatri- 
cal ballet  dancer,  in  which  a  very  little  undeceptive 
gilt  shines  through  a  great  deal  of  very  substantial  dirt," 
furnish  the  partners  for  the  dance.  The  proprietor  does 
not  conceal  his  wrath  at  the  Excise  Law.  " '  All  that  Jack 
wants,'  he  says,  'is  a  glass  of  whisky.  As  it  used  to  be, 
he  would  come  in  here,  have  a  dance,  take  his  rum,  and 
then  we  were  all  right.  He  was  sure  to  spend  his  money 
before  morning  and  ship  the  next  day.  Now  he  comes 
in,  dances,  calls  for  a  drink,  can  get  nothing  but  soda 
water,  and  disappears.  I  paid  one  thousand  dollars  for 
a  place  —  one  thousand  dollars!  and  I  'd  sell  out  to-night 
for  three  hundred  dollars.' "  We  mentally  thank  him  for 
his  testimony  to  the  value  of  the  Excise  Law  and  depart. 

A  visit  to  an  establishment  which  was  formerly  a 
combination  of  prize-ring  and  cock-pit  gives  me  a  glimpse 
of  the  once  flaunting  schools  of  vice  in  New  York  City, 
and  also  an  idea  of  what  reformers  are  doing  to  con- 
trol this  business.  "An  ill-lighted  room,  with  rows  of 
seats,  roughly  constructed  out  of  unplaned  boards, 
rising  one  above  another  to  the  roof  and  completely 
encircling  the  room;  a  vat  or  pit  on  the  floor,  perhaps 
sixteen  feet  in  length  by  ten  in  width;  half  a  dozen  dogs, 
confined  beneath  the  seats,  that  struggle  with  their  chains 
for  freedom  as  we  enter;  a  sleepy-looking  black  bear. 


DISAPPOINTMENT  289 

sole  occupant  of  the  pit,  are  the  characteristic  features 
of  the  coliseum  of  the  American  metropolis.  Here  two 
ragged  roosters  are  set  to  peck  each  other's  life  out,  or 
two  dogs  are  stimulated  to  worry  and  wound  each  other, 
or  are  set  to  fray  poor  bruin,  while  a  hundred  or  so  of 
New  York's  lowest  classes  look  on  the  sport!  And  this 
is  all  that  Christianity  has  left  of  the  horrible  gladiatorial 
combats  which,  in  the  palmy  days  of  Rome,  her  noblest 
men  and  most  refined  and  cultured  women  witnessed 
with  delight  and  stimulated  with  applause.  And  even 
this  is  no  longer.  'Poor  old  bruin,'  says  Kit  Byrnes,  in 
a  melancholy  tone,  'he  can  earn  his  bread  no  more.  Mr. 
Bergh,  with  his  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Animals,  has  stopped  all  our  sports.  No  more  cock- 
fighting;  no  more  bear-baiting.'  And  we  fancy  we 
discern  a  tear  in  the  veteran's  eye,  as  he  calls  to 
remembrance  the  palmy  days  of  Mayor  Wood's 
mayoralty." 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  visit  is  to  the  residence 
of  a  man  who  rejoices  in  the  newspaper  reputation  of 
being  the  wickedest  man  in  New  York  and  is  apparently 
rather  proud  of  his  reputation.  Whether  it  was  deserved 
or  not  I  do  not  know.  He  is  interesting  to  me  as  a  psy- 
chological study.  He  has  two  boys  who  are  his  pride 
and  their  education  is  his  really  laudable  ambition  —  the 
one  grain  of  salt  left  in  him  that  has  not  lost  its  savor. 
One  of  these  boys  he  counted  smart.  "I  am  going,"  he 
says,  "to  make  a  United  States  Senator  of  him."  The 
other  "is  n't  so  smart.  I  am  going  to  make  a  minister  of 
him."  He  stood  the  smart  one  on  the  table  and  put 
him  through  an  extemporized  examination  to  show  his 
smartness.  As  we  turned  to  go  away  the  father  said  to 
me,  in  very  quiet  tones,  not  to  give  himself  away  to 
the  bystanders:    "I  am  going  to  get  the  boys  out  of 


290  REMINISCENCES 

this;  I  have  got  three  brothers  who  are  ministers,  and 
I  am  going  to  send  the  boys  to  one  of  them  to  be  edu- 
cated." Strange  contradiction  of  human  nature,  that 
preserves  the  father's  better  instincts  in  such  an  at- 
mosphere and  life  as  that  to  which  he  has  given  himself. 

One  other  incident  in  this  period  of  my  life  is  a  letter 
written  by  my  father  to  my  wife,  which  I  have  found 
among  her  special  treasures :  — 

My  dear  Daughter:  — 

260  Greene  Street,  February  18,  1868. 

I  have  long  been  desirous  of  making  a  moderate  contribu- 
tion in  token  of  my  good  wishes  toward  the  New  England 
Church  enterprise,  but  it  has  not  been  convenient  for  me  until 
now.  And  as  I  do  not  know  of  any  way  by  which  aid  can  be 
rendered  to  such  an  enterprise  more  advantageously  than  by 
doing  something  to  strengthen  the  hands  and  encourage  the 
heart  of  the  minister's  wife,  I  send  my  contribution  directly 
to  you.  If  you  infer  from  my  doing  so  that  I  appreciate  the 
great  value  of  the  aid  which  you  have  rendered  and  are  con- 
stantly rendering  to  Lyman  in  his  work,  the  absolute  fidelity, 
the  untiring  perseverance  and  the  exhaustless  patience  and 
good  humor  which  you  evince  in  the  performance  of  your  in- 
numerable duties,  and  the  important  influence  exerted  by 
what  you  do  in  securing  the  results,  you  wUl  not  be  very  far 
wrong. 

I  wish  the  money  enclosed  to  be  expended  in  personal  in- 
dulgences and  enjoyments  for  yourself  —  such  as  may  tend  to 
afford  you  rest,  recreation,  and  encouragement,  and  so 
strengthen  you  for  future  labors. 
;  It  is  to  be  understood  that  any  gratifications  which  this 
money  may  procure  are  for  yourself  alone.  Lyman  is  to  have 
no  share  in  them  except  so  far  as  he  makes  himself  so  agree- 
able that  the  enjoyment  for  you  is  heightened  by  his  being 
allowed  in  some  measure  to  partake  of  it ! !  —  a  condition  which 
I  am  sorry  to  say  you  can't  trust  all  husbands  to  fulfill. 

Father. 


DISAPPOINTMENT  291 

This  letter  was  intended  for  no  eyes  but  hers,  and 
possibly  mine;  but  I  venture  to  print  it  here  because  I 
want  the  reader  to  know  both  my  father  and  my  wife, 
the  two  persons  to  whom  I  owe  more  than  to  any  others 
both  the  successes  and  the  joys  of  my  life. 

I  shall  not  delay  long  in  relating  the  tragic  incident 
with  which  my  too  ambitious  ministerial  venture  in 
New  York  City  came  to  its  inevitable  end.  I  do  not 
find  it  agreeable  to  live  over  that  sad  time;  and  I  have 
neither  the  desire  nor  the  ability  to  excite,  by  a  dramatic 
story,  the  pleasantly  painful  emotions  of  a  sympathetic 
reader. 

The  wealthiest  member  of  the  New  England  Church 
was  a  man  of  warm  heart  and  generous  impulses,  and 
was  devoted  to  his  wife  and  six  children,  who  repaid  his 
devotion  with  loyal  affection.  So  devoted  was  he  to  his 
children  that  he  resolved  to  give  to  them  a  cultural 
education  which  he  himself  had  never  enjoyed,  and  he 
therefore  sent  them  abroad  for  a  year  of  education  and 
travel  in  Europe,  under  the  care  of  a  governess  who,  in 
the  experiences  I  am  about  to  narrate,  proved  herself 
possessed  of  good  judgment,  singular  poise,  and  a  cheer- 
ful womanly  courage  which  personal  danger  could  not 
daunt  and  a  great  burden  of  responsibility  could  not 
perturb. 

Shortly  after  their  departure  the  father  was  attacked 
by  a  mysterious  illness — mysterious  to  me  and,  I  believe, 
also  to  his  physicians.  There  appeared  in  it  to  be  com- 
bined some  of  the  elements  of  malaria  and  neurasthenia. 
In  this  illness  he  became  possessed  of  the  idea  that  one 
of  his  children  was  about  to  die  and  he  would  never  see 
her  again.  It  was  not  possible  for  him  to  go  abroad. 
Both  business  exigencies  and  health  forbade.  He  dared 
not  call  for  them  to  come  home  lest  they  should  be  lost 


292  REMINISCENCES 

at  sea.  In  this  state  of  singular  dread,  which  physicians 
and  friends  in  vain  endeavored  to  combat,  he  grasped 
at  the  idea  that  if  his  pastor  would  consent  to  go  for 
them,  all  would  be  well.  This  semi-religious  faith  which 
his  already  diseased  mind  reposed  in  my  special  guard- 
ianship touched  me  deeply.  I  was  reluctant  to  leave 
my  church  in  its  critical  condition  when  a  six  weeks' 
absence  by  its  pastor  might  seriously  affect  its  future, 
and  still  more  reluctant  to  leave  my  wife  to  bear  alone 
the  responsibility  of  the  children  and  of  the  pastorate, 
which  latter  she  had  always  shared  with  me.  But  when 
the  trustees  voted  a  six  weeks'  vacation,  and  one  of 
them  gave  me  assurance  that  my  wife's  financial  needs 
should  be  cared  for  in  my  absence,  I  gave  my  consent, 
and  in  December,  1868,  sailed  for  Europe.  An  ocean 
trip  was  much  more  enjoyable  and  much  less  luxurious 
then  than  now.  Our  staterooms  were  lighted  by  a  candle, 
which  occupied  a  little  triangular  cubby-hole  between 
two  rooms  and  was  extinguished  by  the  steward  at 
eleven  o'clock.  Electric  bells  were  unknown;  when  a 
passenger  wanted  a  steward,  he  called  down  the  passage- 
way for  him.  On  the  other  hand,  the  upper  deck  had 
no  roof  or  cover  of  any  kind,  and  I  recall  even  now  with 
delight  one  day  when  for  several  hours  I  stood  beside 
the  smoke-stack,  and  dodged  behind  it  when  the  spray 
from  the  waves  swept  over  the  deck,  while  we  pounded 
our  way  through  what  the  captain  called  "the  tail  of  a 
cyclone."  If  that  was  the  thrashing  of  his  tail,  I  did 
not  care  to  meet  his  body. 

My  parishioner's  children  were  at  school  at  Brussels. 
I  was  in  haste  to  meet  them,  and  landed  at  Queenstown, 
going  thence  with  the  mail  to  London,  which  I  reached  on 
Sunday  morning  in  time  to  attend  a  service  at  West- 
minster Abbey.    Monday  night  or  Tuesday  morning 


DISAPPOINTMENT  293 

found  me  in  Brussels.  The  governess  had  taken  the 
children  to  Paris  to  give  them  a  glimpse  of  that  city 
before  sailing  for  home,  and  I  followed  them. 

Upon  my  arrival  the  governess  informed  me  that  one 
of  the  children  was  ill  —  if  I  remember  aright,  the  eldest 
daughter,  a  girl  of  sixteen  or  eighteen — and  a  doctor  had 
been  sent  for.  He  came,  and  the  next  day  pronounced 
the  disease,  as  I  understood  at  the  time,  typhus  fever; 
but  whether  it  was  typhus  or  typhoid  I  had  afterward 
some  reason  to  doubt.  Three  other  of  the  children  sick- 
ened, one  after  the  other,  and  the  one  first  attacked  died. 
The  father's  fear  had  been  realized;  the  guardian  whom 
he  trusted  had  not  been  able  to  guard  his  child. 

What  is  the  present  habit  of  France  I  know  not,  but 
under  Napoleon  III  all  funerals  were  conducted  by  the 
State.  They  were  numbered  from  one  to  twenty,  and, 
according  to  one's  means,  one  could  have  anything 
from  a  pauper's  burial,  with  a  pine  box  for  a  coffin  and 
for  a  grave  an  indistinguishable  place  in  a  long  trench 
with  other  paupers,  to  an  imposing  pageant,  with  a 
plumed  hearse,  a  long  procession  of  carriages,  and  hired 
mourners  to  ride  in  them.  I  went  to  the  proper  official, 
selected  the  funeral  we  wished  —  a  hearse  and  two  car- 
riages. As  we  passed  through  the  streets  to  the  vault 
where  the  body  was  to  be  kept  till  I  could  embark  with 
it  for  America,  the  bystanders  on  the  sidewalk  stopped 
and  stood  at  attention,  the  men  bare-headed,  as  a  token 
of  respect  for  the  sorrow  of  those  who  were  to  them 
utter  strangers.  It  was  a  little  thing;  but  ever  since  my 
heart  has  been  warm  to  the  French  people.  I  had  some 
difficulty  in  arranging  for  the  embarkation  of  the  body. 
Sailors  have  a  superstitious  dread  of  sailing  on  the  same 
ship  with  the  dead.  The  Cunard  Line  refused  to  take  the 
body  at  all;  the  French  Line  finally  consented  to  accept 


294  REMINISCENCES 

it  packed  in  a  box  labeled  "a  specimen  of  natural 
history"  —  of  course  in  French.  I  resolved  then  that 
never  when  I  had  control  would  I  allow  the  body  of  one 
whom  I  loved  to  be  transported  as  common  freight  and 
handled  by  careless  and  indifferent  strangers. 

I  left  Miss  B with  the  three  sick  children  — 

convalescing,  but  not  yet  strong  enough  for  the  voyage  — 
and  took  my  journey  home  across  a  winter-swept  At- 
lantic, with  the  two  well  children  and  the  dead  body  of 
a  third.  It  was  a  sad  home-coming.  I  brought  the  dead 
to  the  dying,  for  the  father  had  failed  in  my  absence 
and  the  physicians  gave  no  hope  of  his  recovery.  And 
I  came  home  to  a  sick  wife  and  a  divided  church.  The 
New  York  "Times"  had  published  a  cable  report  of  an 
epidemic  of  fever  in  Brussels  —  the  schools  dispersed, 
many  stores  closed,  the  streets  deadened  by  tan-bark,  or 
in  some  cases  closed  to  traffic.  The  censor  had  not 
allowed  these  facts  to  be  published  in  France.  My 
wife  knew  more  than  I  did.  And  she  read  this  account 
before  she  got  my  letter  announcing  the  illness  of  the 
children.  She  knew  me  ais  one  from  childhood  careless 
of  myself  and  cared  for  by  others.  My  cablegram  that 
we  had  embarked  brought  her  no  relief,  for  the  ten  days' 
voyage  gave  ample  time  for  the  development  of  the 
dread  disease,  and  even  for  it  to  run  its  course  and  reach 
a  fatal  result.  This  anxiety,  added  to  the  parish  anx- 
ieties of  the  previous  months  culminating  in  my  ab- 
sence, had  broken,  not  her  courageous  spirit,  but  her 
never  over-strong  body.  She  had  that  spring  three 
hemorrhages  from  the  lungs,  one  slight,  two  somewhat 
serious.  She  awaited  in  bed  the  news  from  the  arriving 
ship,  uncertain  whether  it  would  bring  her  husband  to 
her  living  or  dead.  Her  pale  face  from  the  pillow  greeted 
me  with  a  smile  that  lingers  in  my  memory  yet,  and 


DISAPPOINTMENT  295 

gave  me  assurance  that  my  coming  was  better  medicine 
for  her  exhausted  nerves  than  any  that  the  doctor  could 
give  to  her. 

I  was  also  confronted  by  a  division  in  opinion  and 
policy  which  had  appeared  in  the  church  during  my  ab- 
sence. A  minority,  though  an  important  and  influential 
minority,  had  grown  weary  of  raising  every  year  a  de- 
ficiency in  revenue,  which,  though  decreasing,  gave  no 
immediate  promise  of  disappearing.  We  all  agreed  that 
a  change  of  location  was  necessary.  The  minority  was 
not  willing  to  wait  until  our  very  gradual  growth  had 
made  us  strong  enough  to  move,  but  wished  to  move  at 
once,  in  order  to  gather  strength.  They  had,  therefore, 
in  my  absence  brought  forward  a  proposal  to  sell  the 
church  property  and  to  lease  a  church  in  Madison 
Avenue.  They  rightly  judged  that  I  was  not  the  man  to 
lead  in  such  an  enterprise,  and  proposed  to  substitute 
a  popular  preacher  who  would  be  expected  to  gather 
by  his  eloquence  a  crowd,  as  Dr.  Talmage  had  done  in 
Brooklyn,  and  Dr.  W.  H.  H.  Murray  had  done  in  Boston. 
To  carry  on  the  existing  enterprise  with  either  a  divided 
or  a  weakened  church  was  out  of  the  question.  I 
promptly  resigned;  the  majority  handed  over  the  con- 
trol of  the  church  to  the  minority;  the  church  on  Forty- 
first  Street  was  sold;  a  church  on  Madison  Avenue  was 
leased;  the  popular  preacher  was  secured;  the  church 
lived  in  its  new  quarters  on  its  capital  for  a  little  over 
two  years,  and  then,  its  money  gone,  dissolved. 

Meanwhile  I  had  ascertained  that  Cornwall  was  the 
nearest  point  to  New  York  City  where  my  wife  could 
escape  the  fogs  and  damps  of  the  Atlantic  coast  and  live 
in  a  comparatively  dry  mountain  air.  The  previous 
summer  we  had  made  trial  of  the  place,  for  we  had 
boarded  there  while  I  wrote,  during  the  week,  my  Life 


296  REMINISCENCES 

of  Christ  and  went  back  and  forth  for  the  Sunday 
services.  We  moved  to  Cornwall  and  took  a  furnished 
house.  The  rent  was  the  same  whether  we  took  the  house 
for  the  summer  or  for  a  year;  naturally  we  took  it  for 
the  year. 

It  was  a  little  over  nine  years  since  I  had  left  the  law 
for  the  ministry  with  a  passionate  ambition  to  become 
a  great  preacher  and  have  some  share  in  the  ethical  and 
the  spiritual  development  of  the  Nation.  Looking  back, 
I  think  now  that  my  first  years  in  Terre  Haute  had  not 
been  wholly  unsuccessful.  But  I  had  accomplished  so 
much  less  than  I  had  hoped  that  my  pastorate  seemed  to 
me  a  failure.  Then  I  had  entered  on  a  national  work 
which  I  hoped  to  make  my  life-work.  It  had  lasted  four 
years.  When  in  Terre  Haute,  I  had  written  to  my  wife 
that  I  longed  for  a  church  of  earnest,  active  members, 
like-minded  with  myself,  that  we  might  grow  together 
into  some  approximation  to  my  ideal  of  what  a  church 
of  Christ  should  be.  The  opportunity  had  been  given  to 
me,  and  the  result  of  my  three  years'  ministry  was  an 
invalid  wife,  a  discouraged  church,  a  disheartened  min- 
ister. I  could  have  found  then,  looking  back  I  can  find 
now,  in  untoward  circumstances,  some  explanation  of 
my  failure.  But  I  have  always  thought  it  better  to 
look  for  causes  of  one's  failure  in  one's  self,  rather  than 
in  one's  circumstances.  When  I  looked  to  myself,  what 
I  found  was  that  my  ambitions  were  too  great  for  my 
abilities.  I  had  not  the  capacity  to  do  what  I  had  hoped 
to  do,  nor  to  be  what  I  had  hoped  to  be.  My  ambitious 
hopes  were  ended. 

But  my  wife's  courage  forbade  my  fears;  her  faith  in 
me  inspired  faith  in  myself.  I  could  not  be  a  great 
preacher  nor  a  great  statesman,  but  I  could  still  be  a  use- 
ful citizen.   To  that  humble  role  in  life  I  resolved  to  de- 


DISAPPOINTMENT  297 

vote  myself.  Our  entire  assured  and  regular  income  was 
fifty  dollars  a  month  from  "Harper's  Magazine "  for  edit- 
ing the  Book  Table.  The  rent  of  our  Cornwall  house 
was  six  hundred  dollars  a  year.  Thus  our  whole  assured 
income  was  pledged  for  our  rent.  The  rest  of  our  ex- 
penses I  must  earn  by  my  pen.  To  this  task  I  set  my- 
self, with  what  results  will  appear  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

BEGINNING  AGAIN 

THERE  is  a  legend  that  Hendrick  Hudson,  sail- 
ing up  the  river  which  now  bears  his  name,  came 
about  forty  miles  from  its  mouth  to  what  he 
supposed  to  be  the  end  of  this  arm  of  the  sea.  Standing 
on  the  bow  of  a  modern  steamboat,  the  unaccustomed 
traveler  will  readily  reach  a  like  conclusion.  His  way 
appears  to  be  stopped  by  a  range  of  hills  through  which 
he  can  discern  no  gateway  until  he  comes  to  within 
perhaps  a  third  of  a  mile  of  them.  Then  he  sees  that  the 
river  up  which  he  had  been  sailing  in  a  northerly  direc- 
tion turns  at  a  right  angle,  and,  following  it,  his  steamer 
moves  westward  for  a  couple  of  miles  or  so,  and  then, 
turning  again  at  a  right  angle,  resumes  its  northerly 
course.  He  is  now  in  the  Highlands  of  the  Hudson. 
The  hills  rise  from  the  water's  edge,  sometimes  with  a 
narrow  plateau  between  their  base  and  the  tidewater, 
sometimes  absolutely  precipitately,  from  one  thousand 
to  fifteen  hundred  feet  in  height.  Through  this  range 
nature  has  made  a  pathway  for  the  river  to  the  ocean. 
It  is  twenty-five  hundred  feet  from  the  bottom  of  the 
river  valley  to  the  top  of  the  environing  hills. 

These  Highlands  of  the  Hudson,  beautiful  for  scenery, 
are  also  rich  in  historic  and  literary  associations.  In 
entering  and  traveling  through  them,  you  pass  through 
Haverstraw  Bay,  where  the  Vulture  lay  anchored,  on 
which  Benedict  Arnold  took  his  flight  when  his  treachery 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  299 

was  discovered;  St.  Anthony's  Nose,  where  the  chain 
was  stretched  across  the  Hudson  River  to  prevent  the 
passage  of  the  British  fleet,  and  close  by  it  the  iron  mine, 
still  worked,  which  furnished  part  of  the  metal  for  the 
chain;  the  house  where  Arnold  was  when  he  learned 
that  his  treachery  had  been  discovered  and  he  slipped 
quietly  away  from  his  unsuspecting  company;  the  beau- 
tiful plateau  at  West  Point  which  George  Washington 
selected  with  rare  foresight  for  the  Military  Academy  of 
the  Nation;  Cro'  Nest,  the  scene  of  the  frolics  of  the  now 
almost  forgotten  Culprit  Fay;  Butter  Hill,  an  English 
corruption  of  the  Dutch  Botha  Berg,  but  three  quarters 
of  a  century  ago  rechristened  by  N.  P.  Willis  Storm 
King,  the  name  which  it  still  bears.  Here  the  steamer 
emerges  again  into  the  open  country,  the  city  of  New- 
burgh  five  miles  in  the  distance  on  the  west  bank.  The 
Highlands,  which  end  as  abruptly  as  they  began,  con- 
stitute a  penetrated  wall  of  rock  fifteen  or  twenty  miles 
in  breadth  from  the  southern  to  the  northern  gateway, 
and  one  thousand  to  fifteen  hundred  feet  in  height. 
In  passing  through  this  wall  the  steamer  has  four  times 
turned  at  a  right  angle.  Thus  this  wall  of  rock  furnishes 
a  substantial  barrier  to  the  sea  fogs  and  sea  air  of  the 
coast.  Spring  on  the  southern  slope  of  this  line  of  hills  is 
fully  a  week  in  advance  of  spring  on  the  northern  slope. 
At  the  northern  gateway  of  these  Highlands,  midway 
between  West  Point  and  New  York  City,  is  situated  the 
village  of  Cornwall,  on  the  west  bank  of  the  river.  When 
in  1869  we  made  it  our  home,  it  was  a  quiet  rural  vil- 
lage, reached  from  New  York  in  the  summer  by  steamer, 
a  three  hours'  sail,  in  winter  by  a  branch  of  the  Erie 
Railway,  three  miles  and  half  to  the  west  of  us.  Its  docks 
furnished  conveniences  for  shipping  milk  and  small 
fruits  in  the  summer;  there  were  so  many  summer  visi- 


300  REMINISCENCES 

tors  in  the  homes  and  so  many  small  boarding-houses  in 
and  near  the  village,  that  some  one  said,  "Everybody  in 
Cornwall  takes  boarders,  some  with  pay  and  some 
without";  and  it  contained  a  factory  which  was  the 
headquarters  of  a  successful  builder  whose  contracts 
took  him  into  New  Jersey  on  the  one  side  and  Massa- 
chusetts on  the  other.  The  opening  of  the  West  Shore 
Railroad  in  1883  made  it  almost  as  easy  to  reach  the 
higher  altitudes  and  cooler  atmosphere  of  the  Catskills 
as  it  had  been  to  reach  Cornwall,  and  the  boarding- 
houses  have  now  disappeared.  But  a  prosperous  carpet 
mill  has  been  established  by  English  capital  which  largely 
employs  English  working  people,  and  the  hills  have  been 
taken  for  summer  residences  by  a  considerable  colony. 
So  the  village,  or,  to  speak  accurately,  the  two  villages 
—  for  Cornwall  is  a  Siamese  twin — has  more  than  double 
the  population  it  had  when  I  made  it  my  home.  What 
has  added  to  its  prosperity  is  the  fact  that  we  have 
succeeded  under  local  option  in  keeping  the  saloon  out 
of  the  town  for  over  twenty  years  past. 

My  wife  took  full  advantage  of  the  country  life  and 
made  full  use  of  the  fresh-air  cure  for  tuberculosis.  She 
lived  out  of  doors,  defied  draughts,  ran  out  bare-headed 
in  all  weathers;  we  got  some  hens  and  she  raised  chick- 
ens; we  prepared  a  garden  bed  and  she  raised  flowers; 
we  had  no  sleeping-porches  —  they  were  unknown  —  but 
she  always  slept  with  the  windows  open.  The  fresh-air 
cure  was  unknown,  at  least  to  us;  it  was  several  years 
before  Dr.  Trudeau  went  to  the  Adirondacks  and  fifteen 
years  before  he  founded  the  sanitarium  there  for  con- 
sumptive patients.  Ten  years  before  this  time  the 
ordinary  treatment  for  consumptives  was  to  shut  them 
up  in  a  close  room,  keep  them  warm,  avoid  draughts,  and 
especially  shun  night  air.    My  wife  was  thus  something 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  301 

of  a  pioneer,  at  first  against  my  anxious  protest.  I  do 
not  think  that  she  had  any  clear  idea  that  her  course 
was  especially  hygienic.  But  she  had  a  great  horror  of 
invalidism  and  no  horror  of  death,  and  was  resolved  to 
live  largely  while  she  did  live.  She  had  no  fear  of  a  short 
life,  but  dread  of  a  contracted  life.  She  had  been  from 
the  day  of  our  marriage  the  physician  of  the  family; 
I  had  a  good  deal  of  faith  in  her  hygienic  judgment  and 
none  in  my  own,  and  I  soon  accepted  her  point  of  view, 
made  no  futile  endeavor  to  make  her  conform  to  the 
rules  of  invalidism,  and  supported  her  as  well  as  I  could 
in  a  course  which  seemed  to  others  as  well  as  to  myself 
audacious.  When  an  anxious  friend  persisted  in  cau- 
tioning her  against  her  course,  she  finally  replied  that  if 
he  wished  to  bury  her  in  a  consumptive's  grave  he  was 
going  about  it  very  directly;  that  she  must  live  as  wisely 
as  shecould,and,not  disregarding  certain  principles  which 
her  doctor  had  laid  down,  must  forget  absolutely  the  pos- 
sibilities which  threatened  her.  This  she  did.  The  re- 
sult could  not  have  been  better  if  she  had  been  following 
the  advice  of  a  modern  expert;  she  had  no  recurrence  of 
the  hemorrhages;  her  lung  diflSculty  was  entirely  cured; 
and  in  her  after  life  she  was  not  even  peculiarly  subject 
to  colds. 

As  I  have  said,  my  entire  regular  income  was  pledged 
for  my  rent,  but  I  had  some  anchors  to  windward  which 
made  my  course  not  quite  so  reckless  financially  as 
without  them  it  would  have  been.  Of  these  the  one  of 
most  immediate  importance  was  my  connection  with 
the  house  of  Harper  &  Brothers.  Its  history  affords  a 
striking,  though  not  unique,  illustration  of  that  growth 
of  a  great  enterprise  from  a  small  beginning  which  was 
so  characteristic  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  especi- 
ally of  democratic  America. 


302  REMINISCENCES 

In  1817  Mr.  James  Harper  and  his  brother  John 
started  in  life  as  the  proprietors  of  a  small  printing  es- 
tablishment in  New  York  City.  The  two  younger 
brothers,  Wesley  and  Fletcher,  followed,  one  after 
another.  Neither  brother  worked  for  himself;  all  for  the 
common  welfare.  How  absolute  was  this  community  of 
interest  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  for  many  years 
all  the  receipts  were  put  into  a  common  fund  and  each 
brother  drew  out  what  he  needed  for  his  personal  use, 
and  no  accounts  were  kept  between  them.  A  gentleman 
once  asked  the  senior  member  of  the  firm  the  not  un- 
natural question,  *' Which  one  of  you  is  the  Harper  and 
which  are  the  brothers?"  "Either  one  is  the  Harper 
and  the  rest  are  the  brothers,"  was  the  reply.  By  a 
process  of  natural  selection  each  brother  took  the  place 
to  which  his  temperament  fitted  him.  John  was  a  natural 
financier  and  acted  as  the  treasurer;  Wesley,  a  literary 
critic  of  excellent  taste  and  judgment,  had  general 
charge  of  the  book  publications;  Fletcher  had  an  origi- 
nating mind  and  created  the  three  periodical  publica- 
tions of  the  house  —  the  "Magazine,"  the  "Weekly," 
and  the  "Bazaar."  James  Harper  exercised  a  peculiar 
kind  of  supervision  over  the  mechanical  work  of  the  es- 
tablishment. Many  years  before  welfare  work,  so-called, 
had  been  invented  he  invented  a  system  of  his  own. 
Every  day,  often  twice  a  day,  he  visited  the  different 
departments  to  see,  not  only  how  the  work  was  going  on, 
but  also  how  the  workers  were  getting  on.  He  knew 
every  workingman  and  working  woman,  and  often  their 
families,  and  of  his  personal  kindness  many  were  the 
stories  treasured  by  employees.  One  typical  instance 
selected  from  notes  which  I  made  over  forty  years  ago 
must  here  suffice.  A  woman  in  the  bindery  had  trouble 
with  her  eyes:   it  interfered  with  her  work  and  gave  her 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  303 

no  little  anxiety  concerning  her  future  employment.  She 
received  an  invitation  to  visit  a  sister  and  get  without 
expense  the  rest  she  needed.  But  she  was  dependent  on 
her  daily  wage  for  her  livelihood.  Mr.  Harper  learned 
the  facts,  not  from  her,  for  she  made  no  complaint  and 
preferred  no  request.  He  stopped  one  day,  drew  from 
her  the  fact  of  the  invitation,  offered  her  a  vacation, 
and  gave  to  her  "a  little  book  to  read  while  you  are 
gone."  When  she  opened  the  book,  she  found  the 
money  for  her  journey  between  the  leaves.  It  is  not 
extraordinary  that  while  I  knew  the  house  it  never  had 
experienced  a  strike. 

The  commingled  caution  and  enterprise  of  these 
brothers  is  indicated  by  two  contrasted  incidents  —  the 
birth  and  what  I  may  call  the  rebirth  of  the  house.  At 
first  they  did  simply  job  printing.  But  work  grew  slack; 
the  presses  stood  idle  or  were  in  danger  of  becoming 
idle.  The  brothers  resolved  to  print  a  book  on  their 
own  account,  selected  it  with  care,  the  eldest  brother 
visited  various  book-sellers  for  orders,  agreed  to  print 
each  seller's  imprint  on  the  copies  printed  for  him,  and, 
when  they  had  received  orders  enough  to  insure  them 
against  loss,  and  not  before,  they  made  their  first  ven- 
ture in  publishing.  From  this  small  beginning  the  house 
grew  until  in  1853,  the  year  I  graduated  from  college, 
it  had  grown  to  be  the  largest  and  most  complete  book 
manufacturing  establishment  in  the  world  —  occupying 
nine  five-story  buildings  on  Pearl  Street  and  five  on 
Cliff  Street.  Then  in  a  day  came  death  and  resurrec- 
tion. A  plumber  was  at  work  in  a  room  used  for  cleaning 
the  rollers  employed  by  the  Adams  presses.  A  pail  of 
camphene  (a  purified  oil  of  turpentine)  stood  near  him. 
He  thought  it  a  pail  of  water,  as  extra  precaution  threw 
his  lighted  match  into  it,  and  in  an  instant  the  room  was 


804  REMINISCENCES 

in  a  blaze.  He  barely  escaped  with  his  life.  This  was 
at  ten  in  the  morning.  At  jBve  in  the  afternoon  the  en- 
tire establishment  was  a  mass  of  smoking  ruins.  "What 
thing  shall  we  save  first.f^"  cried  a  frightened  employee. 
"Never  mind  about  the  things,"  was  the  reply;  "save  the 
lives."  And  they  were  all  saved.  In  a  day  a  million  of 
dollars*  worth  of  property  had  gone  up  in  smoke.  The 
insurance  was  two  hundred  thousand  dollars.  While 
the  firemen  were  still  fighting  the  flames  the  four  broth- 
ers held  a  consultation  on  the  street  and  made  their 
plans  for  resuming  business,  which  they  did  the  Monday 
morning  following  the  fire.  A  composing-room  was  hired ; 
matter  for  a  new  issue  of  the  "Magazine"  was  collected, 
and  a  magazine  was  issued  ten  days  after  the  date  which 
it  bore  upon  its  title  page,  January  1.  Their  only  brief 
reference  to  the  fire  contained  a  defense  of  the  unfortu- 
nate plumber:  "The  fire,"  they  said,  "originated, 
strangely  enough,  in  the  excessive  carefulness  of  a 
plumber  who  had  occasion  to  make  some  repairs  in  the 
press-room." 

William  Borrow  had  just  perfected  his  invention  for 
the  construction  of  iron  beams,  and  the  Harpers,  after 
examination,  adopted  it  in  the  construction  of  what  was 
the  first  fire-proof  building  of  any  size  in  the  city  of 
New  York.  When  I  knew  them,  they  were  occupying 
this  building,  or  rather  these  buildings,  constructed  on 
the  old  site.  And  here  they  edited,  manufactured,  pub- 
lished, and  sold  their  three  periodicals  and  their  innu- 
merable books.  There  was  no  private  office  —  though 
one  was  provided  afterward;  the  members  of  the  firm 
occupied  each  his  own  desk  in  an  open  space  looking 
out  upon  Pearl  Street,  separated  from  the  warehouse 
only  by  a  railing  or  fence.  This  indoor  yard,  if  I  may  so 
call  it,  was  a  business  and  literary  exchange  open  to  all 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  305 

sorts  of  visitors  on  all  sorts  of  business  and  on  none  at 
all;  but  among  them  all  the  men  who  realized  that 
"time  is  money"  were  very  few.  One  of  these  idle  visi- 
tors, after  spending  half  an  hour  in  purposeless  conversa- 
tion with  Mr.  James  Harper,  put  to  him  the  question, 
"Your  brother  John,  I  see,  attends  to  the  finance,  and 
your  brother  Wesley,  I  am  told,  to  the  authors,  and 
your  brother  Fletcher  appears  to  be  always  busy  about 
the  'Magazine'  and  the  weeklies;  what  is  your  depart- 
ment?" "I,"  replied  Mr.  Harper,  leaning  over  and 
speaking  as  if  very  confidentially,  but  in  a  stage  whisper 
quite  audible  to  those  in  the  immediate  vicinity,  "I 
take  care  of  the  bores."  Exceedingly  well  he  did  it; 
his  good  humor  was  unfailing,  his  fund  of  anecdote  ex- 
haustless,  his  knowledge  of  men  an  intuition.  No  man 
was  ever  turned  gruffly  away  from  the  establishment. 
But  many  men  were  adroitly  turned  away  without  even 
suspecting  the  fact.  There  was  but  one  species  of  bore- 
dom which  even  the  philosophy  of  Mr.  James  Harper 
could  not  sustain.  He  drew  the  line  at  listening  to  an 
author's  reading  of  a  manuscript,  and  rarely  submitted 
to  more  than  one  page.  Either  some  new  acquaintance 
coming  in  interrupted  him,  or  one  of  the  young  men 
summoned  him  away  for  a  moment  and  he  forgot  to 
return,  or  a  pressing  engagement  obliged  him  to  excuse 
himself,  or,  if  every  other  resource  failed,  a  sentence  in 
the  manuscript  reminded  him  of  a  story,  and  thereupon 
story  followed  story  in  quick  succession  until  at  length 
the  disgusted  author  rolled  up  his  manuscript  and  de- 
parted. In  such  case  he  generally  reported  Mr.  Harper  as 
a  very  garrulous  old  man. 

Fletcher  Harper  was  the  member  of  this  firm  with  whom 
I  had  most  to  do.  I  do  not  think  he  ever  wrote  a  line 
for  either  one  of  the  periodicals,  and  I  do  not  know  that 


306  REMINISCENCES 

he  ever  read  a  manuscript  for  them,  but  he  not  only  had 
created  them,  he  supervised  and  directed  them.  It  was 
Fletcher  Harper  who  foresaw  that  the  developing  edu- 
cation of  women  was  creating  a  new  reading  constitu- 
ency, and  he  organized  "Harper's  Bazaar,"  the  first  of 
the  women's  periodicals  of  which  there  are  now  so  many, 
and  he  selected  as  its  editor  Miss  Mary  Louise  Booth, 
who  continued  in  charge  until  her  death.  It  was 
Fletcher  Harper  who  perceived  the  opportunity  for  a 
weekly  journal  which  should  employ  both  pen  and  pencil 
in  illustrating  the  history  of  the  times  and  made  "Har- 
per's Weekly"  what  it  was  called,  a  Journal  of  Civiliza- 
tion. He  discovered  or  appropriated  Thomas  Nast, 
the  greatest  of  American  cartoonists  —  cartoonist  but 
not  caricaturist,  for  his  humor  did  not  need  that  quality 
of  exaggeration  which  the  modern  cartoonist  seems  to 
find  necessary  in  order  to  make  his  otherwise  not  too 
obvious  jokes  apparent.  He  called  to  his  aid  George 
'WilHam  Curtis,  who  was  not,  as  he  was  sometimes 
called,  the  editor  of  "Harper's  Weekly,"  but  who  had 
given  to  him  the  editorial  page  to  make  what  he  would 
of  it,  and  who  made  of  it  the  most  influential  editorial 
page  in  America.  The  editing  of  the  rest  of  the  "  Weekly  '* 
was  in  other  hands.  It  was  Fletcher  Harper  who  saw 
that  there  are  thousands  who  would  like  to  read  in  a 
score  of  pages  something  of  the  science  or  travel  or  ad- 
venture contained  in  a  volume  of  five  hundred  pages 
which  only  the  select  few  will  read.  Largely  for  the  pur- 
pose of  giving  in  this  way  to  American  readers  some  ac- 
quaintance with  the  best  material  furnished  by  English 
current  publications  he  called  into  existence  "Harper's 
Magazine."  When  Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  accused  of 
a  heinous  crime,  and  the  malodorous  scandal  was  spread 
all  over  the  English-speaking  world  by  the  newspaper 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  307 

reports  of  the  protracted  trial,  it  was  Fletcher  Harper 
who  asked  me  to  prepare  a  history  of  the  case  for 
"Harper's  Weekly,"  and,  while  I  hope  that  my  history 
did  something  to  correct  false  impressions,  far  more 
was  done  by  the  fact  that  so  influential  a  periodical  as 
"Harper's  Weekly"  showed  its  faith  in  Mr.  Beecher. 
It  was  Fletcher  Harper  who  engaged  my  Uncle  John 
to  write  his  "History  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,"  the  first 
Anglo-Saxon  publication  which  ventured  to  question 
the  prevailing  English  estimate  of  the  Emperor  as  only 
a  successful  freebooter.  Mr.  Harper's  editorial  judg- 
ment was  justified  by  the  extraordinary  addition  to  the 
subscription  list  of  the  "Magazine"  which  this  romantic 
story  brought.  It  was  Fletcher  Harper  who  offered  to 
my  father  the  editorship  of  the  "Magazine"  when  it 
was  started,  an  offer  which  he  wisely  declined.  My 
father  was  an  author,  not  an  editor,  and  the  confinement 
to  an  oflSce,  the  interviewing  of  authors,  the  endless  cor- 
respondence, and  the  endless  reading  of  manuscripts 
would  have  been  very  wearisome  to  him. 

The  connection  which  my  father  and  uncle  had  thus 
made  with  Harper  &  Brothers  made  natural  and  easy 
my  approach  to  the  house.  While  still  pastor  of  the 
New  England  Church  I  had  prepared  an  edition  of  the 
sermons  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  by  a  careful  examina- 
tion of  several  hundreds  of  his  sermons  printed  in  dif- 
ferent journals.  My  object  was  to  present  to  the  reader 
illustrative  specimens  of  the  great  variety  of  types  pre- 
sented by  Mr.  Beecher 's  preaching.  He  was  sometimes 
purely  ethical,  sometimes  profoundly  spiritual;  some- 
times his  sermon  was  a  prose  poem,  sometimes  a  com- 
pact theological  treatise,  sometimes  almost  exclusively 
exegetical.  The  work  was  finally  published  in  1868 
in  two  volumes,  and  the  money  which  was  paid  for  it 


308  REMINISCENCES 

probably  went  into  the  savings  bank.  I  had  habitually 
acted  on  my  father's  principle  of  spending  less  than  I 
earned,  supplemented  by  my  own  principle  of  spending 
it  after  I  had  earned  it.  I  probably,  therefore,  had  in 
bank  a  few  hundred  dollars  of  reserve  to  draw  on  when 
I  moved  my  family  to  Cornwall.  I  had  also  written  a 
"Life  of  Christ,"  and  some  copyright  on  this  book  I 
had  a  right  to  expect  in  the  course  of  the  current  year, 
1869. 

I  was  able  to  secure  occasional  opportunities  to  fur- 
nish articles  for  the  "Magazine"  made  from  English  il- 
lustrated books.  This  practice  has  now,  I  believe,  been 
discontinued.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  discon- 
tinuance has  been  rather  a  disadvantage  to  the  public. 

In  this  work  as  a  magazine  writer  I  learned  a  lesson 
from  my  father  which  has  exerted  a  controlling  influence 
upon  me  in  my  editorial  hfe.  Mr.  Fletcher  Harper 
asked  me  to  write  an  article  for  the  "Magazine"  on 
ocean  steamship  travel,  and  when  I  declined,  requested 
me  to  ask  my  father  to  write  it.    This  I  did. 

"Why  do  you  not  write  the  article  yourself?"  asked 
my  father. 

"Because  I  know  nothing  of  the  subject,"  was  my 
reply. 

"Then,"  said  he,  "you  are  just  the  one  to  write  it; 
for  the  chief  object  of  a  popular  magazine  article  is  to 
give  knowledge  of  a  subject  to  people  who  are  wholly 
ignorant  of  it.  To  do  that  he  must  know  both  the  sub- 
ject and  the  condition  of  ignorance.  If  he  is  familiar 
with  the  condition  of  ignorance,  he  can  make  himself  ac- 
quamted  with  the  subject,  but  if  he  is  thoroughly  familiar 
with  the  subject  it  is  almost  impossible  for  him  to  ac- 
quaint himself  with  the  condition  of  ignorance." 

Whether  I  wrote  this  particular  article  or  not  I  forget. 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  309 

but  this  principle,  laid  down  by  my  father,  became  my 
guide  when  later  I  took  up  editorial  work.  I  have  found 
it  almost  uniformly  true  that  an  expert  cannot  write  on 
the  subject  with  which  he  is  familiar  what  readers  who 
are  not  familiar  with  the  subject  can  understand.  The 
experienced  but  non-technical  writer  must  provide  the 
article,  and  it  must  then  be  submitted  to  the  expert  to 
make  sure  that  he  has  fallen  into  no  serious  errors. 

For  the  first  year  after  going  to  Cornwall  I  attended 
the  Presbyterian  church  directly  opposite  my  home,  and 
there  I  took  my  letter  on  leaving  the  New  England 
Church.  I  was  thus  a  Presbyterian  layman  while  I  was 
a  Congregational  clergj^man.  To  which  denomination 
I  belonged  I  did  not  know.  On  one  occasion,  attending 
some  ecclesiastical  gathering,  a  roll  was  called  and  each 
delegate  was  asked  his  denominational  connection. 
When  my  name  was  reached,  I  hesitated  a  moment,  and 
some  one  called  out,  "Put  him  down  Christian."  That 
suited  me;  how  I  was  enrolled  I  do  not  remember.  I 
have  never  cared  for  denominational  differences;  am  a 
Congregationalist  chiefly  because  I  was  born  and  reared 
in  that  communion;  but  should  have  remained  con- 
tentedly in  any  other  branch  of  the  Christian  Church 
which  would  have  granted  me  its  fellowship  and  allowed 
me  to  preach  the  truth  as  I  understand  it.  My  experience 
as  a  layman  gave  me  a  layman's  point  of  view  of  some 
church  questions  generally  discussed  only  by  clergymen. 
I  embodied  the  results  in  a  series  of  letters  published  in 
the  "Christian  Union"  over  the  nom  de  flume  "Laicus." 
They  were  subsequently  so  connected  by  a  thread  of 
narrative  as  to  make  them  a  story,  and  were  published 
in  book  form  by  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.  in  1871,  under 
the  title  "Laicus,"  and  later  were  republished  under 
the  title  of  "A  Layman's  Story." 


SIO  REMINISCENCES 

When  I  went  to  Cornwall  in  the  spring  of  1869,  it 
was  with  the  expectation  that  after  five  or  six  months  in 
the  country  I  should  find  without  difficulty  some  parish 
and  should  return  again  to  pastoral  work.  But  my  ex- 
perience as  a  candidate,  described  in  a  previous  chapter, 
had  created  in  me  the  resolve  that  I  would  not,  if  I 
could  avoid  it,  seek  for  a  parish,  and  no  parish  came 
seeking  me.  I  received  one  letter  from  California  in- 
viting me  to  try  an  experiment  there,  but  the  distance 
was  too  great,  the  journey  too  arduous,  and  the  hazard 
too  considerable.  I  had  read  in  "David  Copperfield" 
the  story  of  Mr.  Micawber's  experiences  to  good  pur- 
pose, and  had  no  inclination  to  wait  for  something  to 
turn  up.  While  I  was  doing  what  I  could  to  meet  im- 
mediate expenses  by  newspaper  and  periodical  writing, 
I  projected  some  plans  for  something  more  permanent. 
I  wrote  a  volume  retelling  some  of  the  Old  Testament 
stories,  treating  them  as  foreshadowings  or  illustrations 
of  New  Testament  teachings,  entitling  it  "Old  Testa- 
ment Shadows  of  New  Testament  Truths."  I  edited  a 
volume  of  devotional  readings  selected  from  the  pub- 
lished and  unpublished  sermons  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher, 
which  was  entitled  "Morning  and  Evening  Exercises." 
And  I  prepared  "A  Religious  Dictionary"  in  one  vol- 
ume, largely  made  by  condensation  from  existing  Bib- 
lical and  theological  dictionaries.  In  this  work  my  wife 
actively  cooperated,  examining  and  comparing  authors, 
revising  and  condensing  articles  from  other  English 
publications,  and  sometimes  writing  at  my  dictation. 
I  also  employed  a  young  man,  a  graduate  of  Oberlin, 
who  lived  in  my  house,  tutored  some  of  our  children, 
and  aided  me  in  this  editorial  work. 

A  larger  work  which  I  undertook  was  a  "Commen- 
tary on  the  New  Testament,"  for  the  publication  of 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  811 

whicli  I  arranged  with  the  house  of  A.  S.  Barnes  &  Co. 
My  object  was  to  furnish  for  laymen  or  ministers  un- 
familiar with  the  original  tongues  a  commentary  on  the 
New  Testament  which  should  be  primarily  interpreta- 
tive, that  is,  which  should  endeavor  to  explain  the  mean- 
ing of  the  New  Testament  as  an  embodiment  of  funda- 
mental, ethical,  and  spiritual  principles,  without  going 
into  minute  grammatical  interpretations  of  words  and 
phrases.  For  my  work  on  this  commentary  I  depended 
on  a  couple  of  hours  in  the  morning  before  the  family 
were  up.  After  I  accepted  the  pastorate  of  Plymouth 
Church,  in  Brooklyn,  in  1888,  where  I  rarely  could  get 
to  bed  before  eleven  at  night,  I  found  it  impossible  to 
use  these  early  morning  hours,  and  consequently  the 
commentary  was  never  completed,  though  by  special  ar- 
rangement a  volume  on  Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians 
was  prepared  and  added  to  the  preceding  volumes  by 
the  Reverend  Dr.  John  E.  McFadyen. 

If  this  life  had  involved  my  abandonment  of  preach- 
ing, I  should  not  have  been  content;  for  I  like  to  preach 
better  than  to  listen.  But  presently  an  opportunity  was 
offered  for  me  to  return  to  the  pulpit  without  abandoning 
my  literary  engagements. 

The  twin  villages  Cornwall  and  Cornwall-on-Hudson 
(as  they  are  distinguished  by  the  Post-Office  Depart- 
ment) are  so  closely  connected  as  to  appear  to  the  visitor 
to  be  one,  though  there  was,  and  still  is,  a  good-natured 
rivalry  between  them.  Each  has  its  post-office,  its  school, 
its  stores,  its  church  or  churches.  Cornwall-on-Hudson 
has  but  one,  a  Presbyterian  church,  though  at  that  time 
there  was  also  an  Episcopal  chapel.  Between  the  two 
villages  is  a  Roman  Catholic  church,  the  largest  and 
probably  the  most  flourishing  church  in  the  town.  In 
the  village  of  Cornwall,  popularly  known  as  Canterbury, 


312  REMINISCENCES 

with  a  population  adequate  to  support  one  church  ef- 
ficiently, were  five  —  Methodist,  Baptist,  Episcopal, 
Presbyterian,  and  Friends.  The  Presbyterian  church 
in  Cornwall  had  a  congregation  of  about  fifty,  and  paid 
with  difficulty  a  salary  of  five  or  six  hundred  dollars. 
Such  a  church  has  no  choice  but  to  take  as  its  pastor 
either  a  young  man  from  the  seminary,  who  comes  that 
he  may  learn  how  to  preach,  or  a  man  who  by  reason  of 
age  or  ill  health  is  unable  to  do  the  full  work  of  the 
pastor.  The  former  has  no  experience;  the  latter  no 
ambition.  In  the  spring  or  summer  of  1870  a  committee 
called  and  asked  me  to  act  as  temporary  supply.  I  re- 
plied that  my  engagements  were  such  that  I  could  as- 
sume no  pastoral  duties,  I  could  not  even  promise  to 
lead  the  weekly  prayer-meeting;  but  I  would  preach  for 
them  on  Sunday  mornings,  stepping  aside  at  any  time 
when  they  wished  to  hear  a  candidate.  On  tliis  under- 
standing I  came.  And  they  continued  to  look  for  a 
permanent  pastor  until  1887,  seventeen  years  later, 
when  I  went  to  Plymouth  Church. 

My  wife  did  the  pastoral  work  which  I  had  told  the 
committee  I  could  not  undertake.  She  taught  in  the 
Sabbath-school,  on  occasion  played  the  organ  as  a  sub- 
stitute, made  the  acquaintance  of  the  new  members  of 
the  congregation,  and  cultivated  the  acquaintance  of 
the  old  members,  made  our  afternoon  recreative  drives 
opportunities  for  occasional  calls,  and  kept  me  ac- 
quainted with  the  life  and  the  needs  of  the  parish.  I 
had  a  number  of  old  sermons,  now  long  since  destroyed, 
but  I  made  no  use  of  them.  My  wife's  suggestions,  my 
contact  with  a  great  variety  of  men  in  my  somewhat  busy 
life,  and  my  work  on  the  "Commentary"  supplied  me 
with  more  themes  than  I  could  possibly  make  use  of. 

Soon  some  of  the  summer  residents  began  to  come. 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  313 

first  as  visitors,  then  they  took  pews.  The  friendship 
formed  between  my  family  and  one  of  these  summer 
families  resulted,  as  will  hereafter  appear,  in  determining 
for  me  my  life  vocation.  There  was  a  successful  boys' 
boarding-school  on  the  hill  eight  hundred  feet  above  tide 
water,  three  miles  from  the  church.  This  school  began 
to  attend  the  church.  The  growth  of  the  congregation 
was  gradual;  but  before  long  the  little  church  was  well 
filled,  sometimes,  on  bright  days  in  the  summer,  crowded. 
One  enthusiastic  friend,  who,  I  fear,  measured  the  value 
of  the  church  services  by  the  size  of  the  congregation, 
a  not  altogether  unusual  standard  of  measurement, 
was  naively  deHghted  when,  as  occasionally  occurred, 
he  could  feel  himself  obhged  to  go  to  a  neighboring 
house  and  borrow  some  chairs  to  seat  strangers  in  the 
aisle.  The  increased  congregation  brought  with  it  in- 
creased financial  resources.  The  church  was  freshly 
painted  within;  the  old  pulpit,  a  long  counter  behind 
which  the  minister  stood  like  a  salesman  or  a  waiter 
in  a  restaurant,  was  taken  away  and  a  modern  pulpit 
like  an  Episcopalian  reading-desk,  a  gift  of  a  summer 
resident,  was  put  in  its  place;  new  hymn-books  were  pur- 
chased. The  music>  which  was  wholly  congregational, 
was  led  by  a  volunteer  choir,  but  there  were  no  anthems 
except  when  some  summer  visitors  volunteered  a  solo 
or  a  quartette,  an  addition  always  welcomed.  The 
church  began  to  contribute  money  to  the  missionary 
enterprises  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  —  not  much; 
but  it  was  something  to  have  a  church  which  it  had  been 
feared  would  have  to  ask  for  home  missionary  aid  offer- 
ing some  aid  to  other  churches.  A  ladies'  missionary  soci- 
ety was  organized,  of  which  my  wife  was  an  inspiring 
member,  and  a  missionary  box  was  sent  out  every  year. 
The  only  begging  the  church  ever  did  was  the  annual 


J 


314  REMINISCENCES 

notice  from  the  pulpit  inviting  contributions  for  this 
box.  I  remember  the  gales  of  laughter  in  the  secret 
councils  of  the  Ladies'  Aid  when  a  discarded  wig  was 
sent  for  the  home  missionary  box.  What  to  do  with  it 
was  a  serious  problem.  To  return  it  to  the  donor  would 
make  a  tempest  in  a  teapot  —  a  very  small  tempest,  but 
then  it  was  a  very  small  teapot.  Destroy  it  and  keep  the 
secret.''  When  was  such  a  secret  in  a  village  church  ever 
kept?  So,  finally,  with  much  misgiving,  it  was  put  in 
the  box  and  sent  along,  and  presently  came  back  a  letter 
of  special  gratitude  from  the  bald-headed  missionary  to 
whom  it  had  come  as  a  veritable  godsend. 

During  these  seventeen  years  I  was  not  installed 
over  the  church  and  I  never  joined  the  Presbytery. 
I  do  not  think  that  at  any  time  in  my  life  I  should  have 
been  willing  to  subscribe  to  the  Westminster  Confession 
of  Faith,  which  seems  to  me  a  hyper-Calvinistic  docu- 
ment in  its  affirmation  of  divine  sovereignty  and  its 
practical  denial  of  free  will.  I  agreed  with  the  New 
School  interpretation  of  the  Bible  and  with  the  Old 
School  interpretation  of  the  Confession  of  Faith.  But 
I  was  loyal  to  the  Presbyterian  Church,  secured  from 
my  little  congregation  contributions  to  the  Presbyterian 
boards,  and  saw  to  it  that  the  church  was  represented 
at  the  meetings  of  the  Presbytery.  I  do  not  doubt  that 
some  members  of  that  Presbytery  were  more  than  doubt- 
ful of  my  orthodoxy.  But,  if  so,  they  kept  their  doubts 
to  themselves;  no  suspicions  ever  disturbed  the  peace  of 
my  parish. 

The  old  pastor  and  his  wife,  long  before  this  time  re- 
tired from  active  service,  but  still  living  in  the  village 
and  attending  the  old  church,  could  not  have  treated  me 
with  more  affection  had  I  been  their  own  son.  Father 
Silliman,  as  he  was  affectionately  called,  was  a  quaint 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  315 

figure,  with  his  Sunday  blacks  on,  his  white  beard,  his 
infirm  but  spirited  person,  sitting  in  the  haircloth  arm- 
chair beside  the  pulpit,  facing  the  congregation.  Thus 
age  and  youth  combined  in  giving  the  Sabbath  message, 
and  I  sometimes  wondered  if  his  presence  was  not  more 
effective  than  my  address,  if  the  service  did  not  illustrate 
the  saying  that  "Speech  is  silver  and  silence  is  golden." 
I  was  accustomed  when  coming  up  from  New  York  to 
the  evening  meeting  to  take  supper  at  their  house.  And, 
though  I  know  that  some  of  my  teaching  ran  counter  to 
their  cherished  convictions,  they  never  attempted  to  inter- 
fere in  the  slightest  degree  with  my  liberty  in  the  pulpit. 

I  wrote  no  sermons.  I  had  no  time  to  write.  It  is 
true  that  it  takes  more  time  to  prepare  an  extempora- 
neous than  a  written  address.  But  the  time  for  the  writ- 
ten address  must  be  taken  at  the  desk;  the  time  for  the 
extemporaneous  address  may  be  taken  anywhere  —  on 
the  cars,  in  the  street,  in  bed,  before  going  to  sleep  or 
when  first  awaking.  Besides,  to  read  an  essay  to  fifty 
or  a  hundred  of  my  personal  friends  and  neighbors 
seemed  a  very  formal  and  unfit  proceeding.  Several 
themes  would  come  to  me  during  my  week's  work. 
One  of  these  I  would  select,  generally  by  Saturday.  On 
Sunday  morning  I  would  arrange  the  thoughts  which 
had  been  collected  during  my  fragments  of  meditation, 
put  them  in  order  on  a  sheet  of  note-paper  or  on  the  pages 
of  a  sermon  notebook,  and  then  go  into  the  pulpit  to 
talk  upon  this  theme  to  my  congregation  of  a  hundred 
in  the  church  as  I  might  talk  upon  it  to  two  or  three  in 
my  parlor. 

I  soon  learned  what  I  regard  as  the  first  essential  of 
an  effective  sermon.  It  must  be  an  address  to  a  congre- 
gation, not  an  essay  about  a  theme.  It  must  be  addressed 
primarily  not  to  the  intellect  but  to  the  will,  and  in  this 


316  REMINISCENCES 

respect  differs  from  a  lecture,  which  is  addressed  pri- 
marily not  to  the  will  but  to  the  intellect.  It  is  like  a  law- 
yer's speech  to  a  jury,  not  like  a  professor's  lecture  to  a 
class.  The  minister  should  never  ask  himself.  What 
theme  interests  me?  but,  What  theme  will  profit  my  con- 
gregation? He  should  be  able  to  answer  to  himself  the 
question.  What  do  I  want  to  say  to  this  people,  at  this 
time,  and  why  do  I  want  to  say  it?  The  first  requisite 
of  a  good  sermon,  therefore,  is  a  clearly  defined  object ; 
and  this  object,  in  the  preacher's  mind,  should  determine 
his  choice  of  a  subject.  When  this  simple  but  fundamen- 
tal truth  first  dawned  upon  me,  I  was  humiliated  to 
find  how  many  sermons  I  was  preaching  without  a  well- 
defined  object.  And  to  cure  this  defect  I  began  to  write 
down  in  my  sermon  notebook  before  the  theme  or  the 
text  the  object  which  led  me  to  select  them  both.  This 
I  can  best  illustrate  by  a  verbatim  quotation  from  my 
notebook.   I  take  almost  at  haphazard  three  sermons :  — 

June  23d.  Object.  (1)  To  deepen  and  spiritualize  the  con- 
viction of  moralists,  e.g.  .  .  .  (2)  comfort  and  inspire  over- 
conscientious  and  burdened  Christians,  e.g.  .  .  . 

Matt.  vi.  19. 

Where  I  have  here  inserted  points  there  were  in  my 
notebook  the  names  or  initials  of  certain  individuals 
in  my  congregation  as  types  of  the  kind  of  person  I  wished 
to  influence. 

July  7th.    Object  to  intensify  sense  of  divine  presence  and 
glory,  awe  of,  love  for,  faith  in  Him. 
Reading  Acts,  Ch.  xvii,  Psalm  cxxxix. 
Text,  Jer.  xxiii.  24. 

Object.  To  denote  clearly  the  characteristics  of  Christian, 
i.e.,  Christ-like,  sorrow;  both  as  a  comfort  for  those  that  are 
in  trouble,  and  as  a  preparation  for  those  to  whom  trouble  may 
yet  come. 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  317 

Often  the  text  was  not  chosen  until  the  sermon  was 
prepared.  Occasionally  there  was  no  text.  The  habit 
thus  formed  has  remained  with  me  throughout  my  life. 
My  method  of  preparation  for  any  sermon  or  address 
is  to  consider  what  I  want  to  accomplish;  next  what 
thoughts  and  what  organization  of  those  thoughts  will 
be  best  fitted  to  accomplish  that  object;  and,  third,  in 
arranging  those  thoughts  I  endeavor  to  make  my  argu- 
ment cumulative  not  merely  logical,  so  that  the  last 
thoughts  will  be  not  merely  the  conclusion  but  the  climax 
of  the  thoughts  that  have  gone  before.  Only  once  since 
1870  have  I  written  a  sermon  which  I  intended  to  read. 
On  the  Sunday  following  the  death  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  I  was  invited  to  preach  in  his  pulpit,  and  I  did 
not  think  I  could  safely  trust  to  extemporaneous  address. 
I  therefore  wrote  the  sermon  with  care.  On  Friday  or 
Saturday  I  read  it  to  my  wife  and  waited  for  her  ver- 
dict. "Lyman,"  she  said,  "I  think  that  would  make  an 
excellent  article  for  the  'North  American  Review."' 
I  was  liot  so  stupid  as  not  to  discern  the  criticism  con- 
cealed in  the  compliment;  made  an  analysis  of  the  article, 
and  gave  the  sermon  without  a  note  before  me.  It  was 
really  extemporaneous,  for  I  have  no  verbal  memory,  and 
I  made  no  attempt  in  the  pulpit  to  recall  what  I  had 
written  in  the  study.  The  sermon  was  taken  down  in 
shorthand,  and  when  its  publication  was  called  for  it  was 
printed  from  the  stenographer's  notes.  As  a  sermon  the 
extemporaneous  address  was  far  better  than  the  writ- 
ten essay.  That  was  twenty-seven  years  ago.  Very 
rarely  since  then  have  I  spoken  from  manuscript,  and 
then  only  when  I  believed  that  a  carefully  written  paper 
deliberately  read  would  carry  more  weight  than  an  ex- 
temporaneous address;  as  when  I  was  asked  to  discuss 
before  the  New  York  Chamber  of  Commerce  a  new 


318  REMINISCENCES 

charter  proposed  for  New  York  City,  which  I  beHeved 
would  be  almost  wholly  an  instrument  for  evil;  when  I 
was  asked  to  give  to  a  committee  of  the  United  States 
Senate  my  view  on  the  best  way  for  dealing  with  the 
problem  of  monopoly;  and  when,  on  my  installation,  I 
was  called  on  to  give  to  the  Congregational  Council 
some  account  of  my  theological  belief  and  religious  ex- 
perience. In  these  cases  I  believed  a  paper  read  would 
carry  more  weight  than  an  address  delivered.  Occa- 
sionally, though  very  rarely,  I  have  written  an  address 
and  given  it  to  the  press,  but  always  with  the  warning 
that  it  was  only  the  outline,  not  a  correct  transcription 
of  what  I  should  say.  The  public  speaker  of  to-day  is 
given  a  choice:  he  may  write  a  paper  for  the  newspapers 
and  read  or  deliver  it  to  the  audience,  or  he  may  make 
an  address  to  the  audience  and  leave  the  newspapers  to 
get  what  they  can  through  their  reporters.  I  have  in- 
variably made  the  latter  choice.  The  result  has  been 
some  misreports  and  a  good  many  non-reports;  but 
neither  result  has  given  me  any  concern. 

To  return  to  my  narrative. 

At  the  end  of  a  year  and  a  half  I  had  convinced  my- 
self that  I  could  earn  a  support  for  myself  and  my  family 
with  my  pen.  My  wife's  health  was  restored.  My 
children — I  now  had  four — were  thriving  in  the  country 
air.  Neither  my  wife,  my  children,  nor  myself  were 
fitted  for  a  city  life.  The  family  temperament  was  a 
nervous  temperament,  and  life  in  the  city  was  too  tense 
for  us.  I  resolved  to  make  Cornwall  our  permanent 
home,  to  buy  or  build  a  house,  and  trust  to  my  ability 
to  make  an  income  with  my  pen.  My  father  was  not  a 
rich  man.  But  his  expenses  were  few,  and  he  was  still 
actively  engaged  in  authorship.  He  pursued  a  plan  with 
his  four  boys  which  in  its  prudent  generosity  and  its 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  319 

forethought  was  characteristic.  He  lent  his  sons  on 
their  interest-bearing  notes  money  which  they  might 
need  from  time  to  time.  He  trusted  us  to  pay  the  in- 
terest, so  that  in  one  sense  the  loan  was  an  investment. 
When  he  died,  these  notes  would  be  a  charge  against  the 
estate,  and  the  loan  in  no  case  amounted  to  more  than 
the  son's  share  in  the  estate.  He  lent  me  money  enough, 
with  what  I  could  borrow  on  mortgage,  to  enable  me  to 
build.  In  March,  1870,  I  bought  about  two  acres  in 
the  village  of  Cornwall-on-Hudson,  and  there  built 
the  house  which  has  ever  since  been  my  home.  It  is 
about  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  above  the  river;  New- 
burgh  Bay  lies  spread  out  before  us  like  a  lake  to  the 
north;  the  Highlands  of  the  Hudson,  rising  twelve  to  fif- 
teen hundred  feet  from  the  river's  edge,  are  to  the  east, 
and  the  west  gives  us  a  view  of  a  fertile  and  prosperous 
valley.  There  were  only  two  or  three  trees  upon  the 
place,  one  of  which,  for  sentimental  reasons,  I,  or  rather 
my  father,  preserved  by  building  a  mound  of  earth 
about  it  when  the  grading  would  have  exposed  the 
roots. 

My  father,  as  I  have  said  in  the  opening  chapter,  was 
a  natural  landscape  gardener.  But  he  took  no  interest 
in  raising  flowers,  fruits,  or  vegetables.  "There  is  no 
objection  to  a  fruit  tree,"  he  said,  "if  you  can  be  sure 
that  it  will  bear  no  fruit.  But  if  you  plant  a  fruit  tree 
for  the  fruit,  the  winter  will  kill  it,  or  the  frosts  will  kill 
the  buds,  or  blight  will  attack  the  leaves,  or  worms  will 
burrow  in  the  trunk,  or  summer  drought  will  shrivel  the 
fruit,  or,  if  it  survives  all  these  dangers,  the  boys  will 
pick  the  fruit  for  you  some  night  and  you  will  find  an 
empty  tree  in  the  morning."  We  nevertheless  tried  a 
peach  orchard,  and  the  first  winter  verified  his  predic- 
tions —  it  killed  the  trees.    But  there  are  cherry  trees 


320  REMINISCENCES 

which  give  us  an  abundant  crop,  and  an  old  apple  or- 
chard, which  I  later  added  to  the  homestead,  gives  us 
apples  in  the  fall  and  a  wealth  of  apple  blossoms  in  the 
spring.    My  father  forgot  that  fruit  trees  give  blossoms 
as  well  as  fruit.    He  spent  hours  with  me  in  his  visits 
in  the  spring  and  fall  in  planning  the  roadway  and  the 
paths  and  counseling  about  shade  trees.   My  wife  was  an 
apt  pupil.    I  do  not  know  of  any  place  so  small  which 
has    an  equal  variety  and  quantity  of  shade  trees,  and, 
with  possibly  one  or  two  exceptions,  my  wife  selected, 
placed,  and  supervised  the  planting  of  them  all.    In 
this  home  two  of  my  six  children  and  three  of  my  grand- 
children were  born.    Here  all  of  my  children  spent  their 
childhood  until  they  went  away  to  school  or  college.   To 
Cornwall  three  of  my  four  sons  have  returned  and  built 
their  country  homes.   And  here  four  of  my  children  and 
all  my  grandchildren  live  in  the  summer,  and  some  of 
them  throughout  the  year.    Building  when  I  did  was 
something  of  a  venture.    But  I  hold  it  to  be  a  sound 
economic  principle  that  when  a  man  has  good  reason 
to  believe  that  his  home  is  likely  to  be  permanent,  it 
is  prudent  economy  for  him  to  estimate  what  rent  he  can 
pay  and  then  build  or  buy  a  home,  provided  the  interest 
and  taxes  do  not  amount  to  more  than  the  rent  he  can 
afford.   The  experience  in  my  case  serves  to  justify  this 
principle. 

The  house  finished,  my  life  in  it  was  characterized  by 
a  degree  of  regularity  which  I  had  not  before  attempted. 
I  rose  at  half -past  four  or  five,  made  myself  a  cup  of  cof- 
fee, and  with  that  and  a  roll  for  an  early  breakfast 
worked  upon  the  "Commentary"  until  the  family  break- 
fast at  eight.  From  nine  until  a  two-o'clock  dinner  I 
worked  in  the  library  upon  the  "Religious  Dictionary" 
or  upon  my  book  reviews  for  "Harper's  Magazine," 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  321 

or  any  chance  newspaper  or  magazine  article  which  I 
might  have  on  hand.  The  afternoon,  after  dinner  and 
an  hour's  sleep  to  make  up  for  the  early  rising,  I  gave  to 
the  children,  or  to  work  upon  the  grounds,  or  to  a  drive 
with  my  wife.  I  bought  a  canoe  with  air  chambers  in 
bow  and  stern,  making  it  a  life  boat,  and  went  out  in  it 
with  my  children  on  the  river  or  up  the  creek.  The  boys 
made  a  skiff  themselves  on  a  pattern  suggested,  I  believe, 
by  the  "St.  Nicholas."  We  carted  it  over  the  hills  to  a 
pond  in  the  Highlands  where  for  two  or  three  successive 
summers  we'  camped  out  for  a  few  days.  The  wooded 
hills  about  Cornwall  with  their  abandoned  wood  roads 
afford  fine  opportunities  for  pedestrian  excursions,  and 
these  constituted  a  common  summer  recreation.  In  the 
summer  three  days  in  the  week  the  afternoon  was  de- 
voted to  a  swim  in  the  Hudson  or  in  the  mouth  of  the 
creek  emptying  into  it.  I  taught  the  four  boys  to  swim, 
and  they  all  swim  better  than  I  can.  It  is  a  part  of  my 
philosophy  that  the  sons  and  daughters  should  surpass 
their  parents,  else  this  world  would  make  no  progress. 
I  was  generally  in  bed  and  asleep  before  ten,  in  prepara- 
tion for  early  rising  the  next  day.  If  there  were  guests, 
I  left  my  wife  to  entertain  them.  She  had  no  inclination 
for  either  early  retiring  or  early  rising,  and  I  was,  and 
still  am,  inclined  to  both.  From  the  very  beginning  of 
our  Cornwall  experiment  I  earned  enough  for  our  com- 
fortable support,  but  I  was  always  a  little  anxious  over 
the  question  what  would  happen  to  us  when  the  "Dic- 
tionary" was  finished  and  the  demand  for  my  casual 
articles  for  the  magazines  and  newspapers  came  to  an 
end.  My  wife  laughed  at  my  fears,  but  I  often  told  her 
that  I  could  trust  the  Lord  for  everything  but  money. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  see  what  right  any  man  has  to 
live  on  other  people  and  trust  the  Lord  to  pay  his  debts. 


322  REMINISCENCES 

These  fears  were  removed  in  the  spring  of  1871  by  an 
invitation  from  a  wholly  unexpected  quarter. 
y  The  American  Tract  Society  was  organized  in  1825 
for  the  purpose  of  creating  a  rehgious  pubhshing  house 
national  in  scope  and  catholic  but  evangelical  in  spirit. 
In  1870  it  had  become  one  of  the  important  publishing 
houses  of  America.  It  printed  tracts  and  sold  them  at 
cost  for  gratuitous  distribution.  It  printed  books  es- 
pecially for  use  in  the  church  and  Sunday-School,  and 
published  several  periodicals,  including  two  or  three  in 
foreign  languages.  The  publications  were  under  the 
control  of  a  committee  representing  different  Protestant 
evangelical  denominations  and  its  constitution  provided 
that  no  publication  should  be  issued  by  the  house  to 
which  any  member  of  that  committee  objected.  Its 
publication  work  was  carried  on  under  the  direction  of 
a  business  manager  and  three  secretaries,  the  latter 
dividing  among  themselves  the  supervision  and  selection 
of  the  publications.  This  society  in  1870  proposed  to 
add  to  their  other  periodicals  an  "Illustrated  Weekly" 
which  should  differ  from  other  religious  weeklies  by  being 
illustrated,  and  from  other  illustrated  weeklies  by  being 
distinctly  religious.  The  committee  proposed  to  me 
to  organize  and  become  the  editor  of  this  new  publica- 
tion. 

The  invitation  appealed  to  me  very  strongly.  The 
position  would  give  me  a  stated  and  regular  income; 
it  would  relieve  me  from  the  necessity  of  finding  a  market 
for  my  literary  wares  in  different  periodicals  and  among 
different  publishers,  a  task  which  was  peculiarly  obnox- 
ious to  me;  and,  if  the  enterprise  succeeded,  it  would 
give  me  a  position  of  influence  and  usefulness.  There 
were  two  obstacles  in  the  way  of  acceptance.  Cornwall 
was  too  far  from  New  York  and  too  inaccessible  to  make 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  323 

daily  trips  possible.  In  the  summer  I  must  come  and  go 
by  a  boat  which  did  not  reach  New  York  until  nearly 
eleven  o'clock,  or  by  train  on  the  Erie  Railroad  from  a 
station  three  miles  and  a  half  from  my  house.  This  dif- 
ficulty was  overcome  by  securing  in  connection  with  the 
editorial  office  a  bedroom  where  I  could  spend  the  night 
whenever  so  inclined,  getting  my  meals,  as  I  had  done 
when  a  college  boy,  in  restaurants.  The  other  difficulty 
was  more  serious.  I  believed  then,  as  I  believe  now,  that 
the  editor-in-chief  of  either  a  daily  or  a  weekly  pub- 
lication must  be  something  of  an  autocrat.  He  must  be 
able  habitually  to  pass  upon  manuscripts  offered  for 
publication  without  taking  time  for  consultation  with 
others,  and  not  infrequently  he  must  decide,  not 
only  upon  specific  editorial  utterances,  but  upon 
questions  involving  general  policy,  without  waiting 
for  the  approval  of  associates.  The  Tract  Society 
had  never  been  used  to  any  such  method  of  publica- 
tion. Every  question  had  been  submitted  to  and 
discussed  by  the  secretaries,  and  unanimity  of  opinion 
had  practically  been  made  a  prerequisite  to  publication. 
The  secretaries  were  naturally  desirous  to  maintain  this 
principle,  partly  perhaps  because  they  were  unwilling 
to  relinquish  their  customary  authority,  but  chiefly, 
I  am  sure,  because  they  were  prudently  afraid  to  repose 
in  a  single  and  comparatively  unknown  associate  a  de- 
gree of  power  which  no  one  of  them  had  ever  exercised. 
Upon  this  question  we  had  repeated  conferences.  I  ex- 
plained to  the  committee  the  grounds  for  my  convictions, 
and  to  all  compromises  which  clouded  or  obscured  this 
fundamental  principle  of  final  authority  in  the  editor-in- 
chief  I  interposed  a  persistent  negative.  At  length  my 
principle  was  accepted.  I  was  made  editor-in-chief,  the 
whole  responsibility  of  the  journal  was  placed  upon  me, 


324  REMINISCENCES 

and  I  entered  upon  my  duties  with  the  good  will  of  my 
associates,  though  not  without  some  fears  on  their  part. 
Having  obtained  this  authority,  I  was  cautious  in  its 
exercise,  and  customarily  conferred  with  the  secretaries 
respecting  important  articles  and  editorials  whenever  I 
could  do  so  without  injurious  delay.  Of  course  the  con- 
stitutional provision  of  the  Society  that  nothing  could 
be  published  to  which  any  member  of  the  publication 
committee  objected  remained  unaltered,  and  every  week 
the  advance  sheets  of  the  "Illustrated  Christian  Weekly" 
were  sent  to  each  member  of  the  publication  committee 
for  their  consideration.  Never  during  my  administra- 
tion was  any  article  returned  with  an  objection;  and  I 
suspect  after  the  first  few  weeks  of  publication  the 
advance  sheets  were  rarely  looked  at.  The  members  of 
the  committee  were  busy  men. 

The  avoidance  of  friction  during  the  five  years  of 
my  editorship  of  the  "Illustrated  Christian  Weekly" 
was  partly  due  to  the  mediating  temperament  which  I 
had  inherited  from  my  father.  I  have  always  been 
willing  to  yield  upon  questions  of  detail  if  I  can  have 
my  way  upon  questions  of  prime  importance.  But  this 
freedom  from  friction  was  certainly  not  less  due  to  my 
associate  in  the  editorship,  Mr.  S.  E.  Warner.  He  was  a 
man  of  infinite  patience,  unwearied  in  detail.  I  was  so 
eager  to  reach  my  result  as  to  be  often  careless  of  detail. 
He  would  often  spend  as  much  time  in  the  weighing  of 
a  word  or  a  phrase  as  I  would  spend  in  writing  a  para- 
graph. This  was  work  he  liked  to  do,  and  I  liked  to 
have  him  do  it.  He  was  familiar  with  the  traditions  of 
the  Society  and  knew  instinctively  what  word  or  phrase 
might  offend  the  sensibilities  of  the  secretaries,  the  com- 
mittee, or  our  constituents.  I  soon  learned  to  write  my 
editorials  with  joyous  rapidity  and  leave  corrections 


BEGINNING  AGAIN  325 

to  him,  almost  invariably  accepting  them  without  a 
question,  and  often  leaving  to  him  the  final  reading  of 
the  editorial  while  I  took  my  train  for  home.  After  the 
work  was  once  fairly  organized  and  my  personal  rela- 
tions were  adjusted,  I  continued  to  do  most  of  my  edi- 
torial writing  and  practically  all  the  preparatory  study 
in  my  library  at  Cornwall.  It  was  my  editorial  theory, 
which  Mr.  Warner's  association  helped  me  to  carry  out, 
that  the  editorship  of  an  influential  journal  needs  two 
minds,  one  careless  of  detail,  the  other  devoted  to  detail. 
If  the  editor-in-chief  lives  and  carries  on  his  writing  in 
his  office,  the  details  come  to  him  whether  he  will  or 
no,  and  he  finds  in  the  constant  interruptions  of  the 
office  little  opportunity  for  the  study  of  great  questions 
and  less  opportunity  for  meditating  on  them.  After  I  left 
the  Tract  Society  in  1876  to  accept  the  editorship  of  the 
"Christian  Union"  the  "Illustrated  Christian  Weekly " 
was  continued  under  other  editorial  direction  for  ten 
years;  it  was  then  sold  and  conducted  as  a  private 
enterprise  for  a  few  years  more,  and  was  finally  discon- 
tinued. One  cause  which  led  to  its  demise  was  the 
increasing  tendency  of  the  community  to  abolish  the  old- 
time  distinction  between  the  religious  and  the  secular, 
a  tendency  which  has  brought  about  the  diminishing  cir- 
culation and  influence  of  most  of  the  church  papers  and 
has  led  the  public  more  and  more  to  look  in  undenomina- 
tional and  secular  periodicals  for  information  concerning 
religious  movements  and  for  discussion  of  religious  prob- 
lems. In  its  bearing  on  my  life  the  editorship  of  the 
"Illustrated  Christian  Weekly"  was  chiefly  valuable  as 
an  apprenticeship  for  the  larger  work  which,  wholly  un- 
suspected by  me,  lay  before  me.  What  that  work  was 
and  how  I  came  to  enter  upon  it  appears  in  the  next 
chapter. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   NEW  JOURNALISM 

THE  New  York  "Independent"  was  established 
in  1848  as  a  representative  of  radical  Congrega- 
tionalism, and  placed  under  the  joint  editorship 
of  three  Congregational  ministers  —  Dr.  Richard  Salter 
Storrs,  Leonard  Bacon,  and  Joseph  P.  Thompson.  In- 
dependence in  Church  carries  with  it  independence  in 
State,  and  the  new  journal  gave  voice  to  the  reforming 
spirit  of  the  time.  It  was  especially  vigorous  in  its  in- 
terpretation and  advocacy  of  the  anti-slavery  move- 
ment. In  1861  Henry  Ward  Beecher  succeeded  the 
triumvirate  and  became  editor-in-chief,  and  the  edi- 
torials which  he  wrote  on  the  slavery  question  were 
quoted  and  copied  North  and  South  and  exerted  a 
powerful  influence  in  shaping  public  opinion.  But  he 
soon  wearied  of  the  regularity  and  routine  inevitable  in 
editorial  work,  and  in  the  fall  of  1863  retired,  giving 
place  to  Theodore  Tilton,  his  protege,  a  brilliant  writer 
but  an  erratic  thinker.  Mr.  Beecher  continued,  how- 
ever, to  write  for  the  paper  at  intervals,  and  was  under 
contract  to  give  to  it  a  sermon  every  week  for  publica- 
tion. When  the  Republican  party,  after  the  death  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  enforced  upon  the  South  a  policy  of 
universal  suffrage  which  devolved  the  political  power 
in  the  Southern  States  upon  the  ignorant  and  incom- 
petent, too  often  led  by  the  self-seeking  and  the  corrupt, 
Mr.  Beecher  parted  company  with  his  old  anti-slavery 
allies,  and  when  a  soldiers'  convention    was  held  in 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  327 

Cleveland,  Ohio,  to  pledge  from  men  of  unquestionable 
loyalty  their  support  to  President  Johnson  in  his  re- 
sistance to  the  Republican  radical  policy,  Mr.  Beecher 
wrote  a  letter  of  sympathy  which  aroused  against  him 
almost  as  much  indignation  as  Daniel  Webster's  4th  of 
March  speech  in  favor  of  the  compromise  measure  had 
aroused  against  that  statesman  sixteen  years  before. 
The  "Independent,"  which  adhered  to  the  radical  wing 
of  the  Republican  party,  sharply  criticised  its  former 
editor,  and  at  the  same  time,  without  notice  to  Mr. 
Beecher,  ceased  the  publication  of  his  sermons.  The 
criticism  Mr.  Beecher  bore,  as  he  bore  all  such  criticisms, 
with  equanimity.  If  the  withdrawal  of  the  sermons  had 
been  accompanied  with  any  explanation  to  the  public, 
I  think  he  would  have  borne  that  also.  But  no  explana- 
tion was  offered;  the  public,  which  is  accustomed  to 
jump  to  its  conclusions  without  waiting  for  a  knowledge 
of  the  facts,  assumed* that  Mr.  Beecher  had  out  of  pique 
ceased  to  furnish  his  sermons  to  the  paper  which  had 
criticised  him,  and  he  was  deluged  with  letters  from  all 
over  the  country  rebuking  him  for  acting  in  such  dis- 
regard of  the  principles  and  the  spirit  which  in  his 
preaching  he  inculcated.  In  sheer  self-defense  he  gave 
to  the  "Independent"  the  three  months'  notice  required 
to  end  the  contract,  and  at  the  same  time  let  the  facts 
be  known.  It  may  be  presumed  that  the  protesting 
letters  now  began  to  pour  in  upon  the  "Independent." 
At  all  events,  it  promptly  proposed  to  recommence  the 
publication  of  the  sermons.  But,  while  Mr.  Beecher  was 
not  easily  aroused  by  any  injustice  to  himself,  when  his 
resolution  was  once  taken  he  did  not  easily  reverse  it. 
His  connection  with  the  "Independent"  was  never 
renewed. 
This  break  took  place  in  the  fall  of  1866.  Mr.  Beecher's 


328  REMINISCENCES 

friends  at  once  proposed  to  start  another  weekly  which 
should  be  the  exponent  of  his  views,  political  and  re- 
ligious; but  for  a  time  he  resisted  all  persuasions  which 
would  lead  him  into  a  position  of  apparent  rivalry  with 
the  journal  whose  editor,  Theodore  Tilton,  and  pub- 
lisher, H.  C.  Bowen,  were  members  of  his  church  and 
had  been  his  warm  personal  friends.   Three  years  passed 
—  time  enough  for  the  public  to  forget  the  incident  and 
to  give  the  "Independent"  a  standing  quite  apart  from 
Mr.  Beecher.   A  little  paper  called  the  "  Church  Union," 
with  a  circulation  of  two  or  three  thousand,  was  in  ex- 
istence, devoted  to  the  promotion  of  an  organic  union 
^      of  all  Protestant  churches  in  one  body,  an  ideal  which 
IVIr.   Beecher  thought  neither  practical   nor  desirable. 
The  publishing  house  of  J.  B.  Ford  &  Co.  purchased 
this  paper  and  converted  it  into  the  "Christian  Union," 
devoted  to  the  promotion  of  a  unity  of  feeling  and  a  co- 
operation of  effort  of  all   Christian  churches,   and  in 
June,  1870,  it  began  its  new  life  with  the  salutatory  of 
Henry   Ward   Beecher   as   its   editor-in-chief.     In   this 
salutatory  he  defined  both  the  purpose  and  the  spirit  of 
the  new  journal.   The  "Christian  Union,"  he  said,  "will 
devote  no  time  to  inveighing  against  sects.    But  it  will 
spare  no  pains  to  persuade  Christians  of  every  sort  to 
treat  one  another  with  Christian  charity,  love,  and  sym- 
pathy. .  .  .  Above  all,  and  hardest  of  all,  it  will  be  our 
endeavor  to  breathe  through  the  columns  of  the  *  Chris- 
tian Union'  such  Christian  love,  courage,  equity,  and 
gentleness  as  shall  exemplify  the  doctrine  which  it  un- 
folds, and  shall  bring  it  into  sympathy  with  the  mind 
and  will  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  in  which  great  labor 
we  ask  the  charity  of  all  who  differ,  the  sympathy  of  all 
who  agree,  and  the  prayers  of  all  devout  men,  whether 
they  agree  with  or  differ  from  us." 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  329 

Nearly  twenty  years  before,  F.  D.  Maurice,  whose 
provocation  was  great  and  who  was  never  lacking  in 
courage,  had  made,  in  a  letter  to  Lord  Ashley,  a  bitter 
attack  on  the  religious  press  of  England,  in  which  he 
said:  "The  principle  of  doing  evil  that  good  may  come, 
that  it  is  lawful  to  lie  to  ^  God,  that  no  faith  is  to  be  kept 
with  those  whom  they  account  heretics,  are  principles 
upon  which  these  Protestant  writers  habitually  and 
systematically  act.  The  evil  which  they  do  to  those 
whom  they  slander  and  attack  is  trifling;  the  evil  which 
they  do  to  their  readers  and  admirers  is  awful."  I  do 
not  think  the  American  religious  press  ever  deserved  so 
severe  an  indictment;  whether  the  English  press  de- 
served it  or  not  I  do  not  know.  But,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  the  "Independent,"  all  the  religious  papers 
of  any  note  were  denominational  organs.  They  have 
been  not  inaptly  called  "trade  journals."  Their  first 
duty  was  to  report  the  doings  and  defend  the  practices 
and  tenets  of  their  respective  sects.  And  the  amenities 
which  characterized  their  denominational  controversies 
is  not  unfairly  illustrated  by  the  following  paragraph 
from  the  New  York  "Independent,"  published  about 
the  time  of  which  I  am  writing,  and  referring  to  a  con- 
temporary religious  weekly :  — 

Take  a  man  who  can  neither  write,  nor  preach,  nor  keep 
his  temper,  nor  mind  his  own  business;  thrill  his  bosom  day 
by  day  with  a  twenty  years'  dyspepsia;  flush  his  brain  with 
the  hallucination  that  his  bookkeeping  mind  is  competent  to 
religious  journalism;  put  a  pen  in  his  hand  wherewith  to 
write  himself  down  a  Pecksniff;  set  him,  like  a  dog  in  his  ken- 
nel, to  make  a  pastime  of  snapping  at  the  respectable  people 
of  the  neighborhood,  and  then,  gentle  reader,  you  have  a 
specimen  copy  of  the  "Evangelist." 

*  So  quoted  in  his  biography,  but  I  suspect  is  a  misprint;  probably  should 
be"Ue/or  God." 


330  REMINISCENCES 

That  a  paper  could  be  a  Christian  paper  and  not  a 
church  organ  appeared  to  this  sectarian  press  quite  im- 
possible. The  novel  proposal  was  greeted  with  a  chorus 
of  protest,  criticism,  and  derision  which  was  not  always 
free  from  personalities.  The  following  paragraph  from 
one  of  Mr.  Beecher's  earliest  editorials  must  here  suffice 
to  interpret  to  the  reader  the  kind  of  reception  which 
was  accorded  to  the  "Christian  Union"  by  its  religious 
contemporaries  and  the  spirit  in  which  Mr.  Beecher  re- 
plied to  their  welcome :  — 

The  "Watchman  and  Reflector"  has  introduced  a  needless 
personal  element  into  its  remarks:  "With  the  highest  respect, 
however,  for  Mr.  Beecher's  pulpit  ability  and  his  great  free- 
dom from  a  blind  regard  for  sect,  we  doubt  his  competency  to 
guide  Protestant  Catholicism.  He  is  too  impulsive.  He  is 
too  sentimental.  He  is  too  loose.  He  is  too  ready  to  surrender 
truth."  In  editing  the  "Christian  Union"  Mr.  Beecher  no 
more  proposes  "to  guide  Protestant  Catholicism"  than,  in 
editing  the  "Watchman  and  Reflector"  Mr.  Olmstead  pro- 
poses to  guide  the  Baptist  churches  of  New  England.  May  we 
not  be  allowed  to  contribute  what  little  we  can  to  so  good  an 
end  as  the  more  cordial  cooperation  of  all  Christians?  As  to 
the  rest  of  the  paragraph  ("He  is  too  impulsive.  He  is  too 
sentimental.  He  is  too  loose.  He  is  too  ready  to  surrender 
truth"),  we  shall  take  it  to  heart  and  strive  henceforth  to  be 
slower,  dryer,  tighter,  and  more  obstinate. 

The  public  appreciated  the  purpose  of  the  "Chris- 
tian Union"  better  than  did  the  denominational  organs, 
and  it  sprang  at  once  into  a  circulation  of  thirty  thou- 
sand, probably  larger  than  that  of  any  church  organ, 
with  possibly  one  or  two  exceptions.  It  was  the  chromo 
age,  and  also  the  age  of  giving  premiums  to  subscribers. 
The  enterprising  publisher  got  two  charming  chromos 
of  a  little  child  with  the  descriptive  titles  "Wide  Awake" 
and  "Fast  Asleep,"  had  one  hundred  and  thirty  thou- 
sand copies  printed  in  France,  gave  a  copy  of  each  print 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  331 

to  every  new  subscriber  to  the  "Christian  Union,"  and 
in  a  single  j^ear  pushed  the  circulation  up  to  one  hundred 
and  thirty  thousand  or  thereabouts. 

Meantime  I  was  both  writing  a  weekly  letter  for  the 
"Christian  Union"  and  doing  some  incidental  editorial 
work  for  the  "Independent,"  chiefly  book  reviewing. 
This  casual  and  intermittent  employment  gave  me  a 
somewhat  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  feeling  of 
both  the  editor  and  the  publisher  of  the  "Independent," 
and  I  took  occasion  to  warn  Mr.  Beecher  that  the  phe- 
nomenal success  of  his  paper  had  intensified  their  hos- 
tility to  him,  aroused  by  his  withdrawal  three  years 
before.  He  laughed  at  my  fears;  and  I  must  confess 
that  when  the  conspiracy  against  him  was  consummated 
and  the  charges  were  brought  against  him  with  the 
avowed  purpose  of  driving  him  into  retirement,  I  was 
no  less  amazed  than  he.  My  conviction,  which  at  the 
end  of  the  long  trial  I  expressed  editorially  in  the  columns 
of  the  "Illustrated  Christian  Weekly,"  that  "the  in- 
herently improbable  accusation  is  the  product  of  a 
jealous  malice,"  is  the  judgment  of  history.  Accusers 
and  accusation  are  now  alike  forgotten.  But,  coupled 
with  other  causes,  they  proved  at  the  time  disastrous  to 
the  "Christian  Union."  The  subscriptions  purchased 
by  chromos  did  not  stay  purchased.  It  was  said  that  in 
one  Canadian  town  French-Canadian  subscribers  were 
obtained  who  could  not  read  the  English  language,  and 
who  had  subscribed  to  the  paper  solely  for  the  pictures. 
Another  chromo  for  the  next  year's  campaign  proved 
ineffective.  The  firm  of  J.  B.  Ford  &  Co.  failed,  whether 
owing  to  this  collapse  in  the  subscription  list  or  to  other 
causes  I  do  not  know.  A  small  corporation  of  friends  of 
Mr.  Beecher  was  organized  to  publish  the  "Christian 
Union."   But  at  that  time  Mr.  Beecher's  name  was  not 


832  REMINISCENCES 

a  name  to  conjure  by.  Although  his  church  was  still 
crowded  and  whenever  he  lectured  throngs  flocked  to 
hear  him,  the  paper  which  bore  his  name  had  to  make 
its  way  against  an  ebbing  tide  and  an  adverse  wind. 

I  believe,  however,  that  it  would  have  more  than  held 
its  own,  in  spite  of  these  adverse  circumstances,  if  it  had 
not  been  for  one  other  circumstance  not  less  adverse. 
Mr.  Beecher,  during  the  first  year  of  the  "Christian 
Union,"  had  written  constantly  for  it;  and  what  he  wrote 
had  the  impress  of  his  genius.  Then  came  the  time  of 
accumulating  difficulties.  To  write  became  an  arduous 
task.  When  he  wrote,  there  was  no  audience  visibly 
present  to  inspire  his  pen,  as  there  was  when  he  spoke 
to  inspire  his  tongue.  Though  his  name  stood  on  the 
first  page  of  the  "  Christian  Union  "  as  its  sole  editor,  he 
rarely  wrote  for  it.  Yet  he  would  not  allow  its  columns 
to  defend  his  good  name  from  attack.  I  doubt  whether 
there  was  any  journal  in  America  which  had  as  little  to 
say  about  him  as  the  "Christian  Union."  His  enemies 
would  not  take  it  because  it  carried  his  name.  His 
friends  did  not  take  it  because  it  carried  nothing  of  his 
but  his  name.  His  associate,  Mr.  George  S.  Merriam, 
under  other  circumstances,  would  have  made  a  great 
editor.  He  wrote  a  beautiful  English  because  his  was  a 
beautiful  spirit.  His  character  enabled  him  to  draw 
about  him  a  notable  corps  of  contributors.  The  "Chris- 
tian Union"  under  his  editorship  was,  in  my  judgment, 
the  best,  though  not  the  most  popular,  literary  weekly 
in  America.  But,  though  it  offered  to  its  readers  Mr. 
Beecher,  it  gave  neither  Mr.  Beecher  nor  anything  about 
Mr.  Beecher;  and  Mr.  Merriam  resigned. 

It  was  at  this  juncture,  in  the  spring  of  1876,  that  the 
proposition  was  made  to  me  to  become  associated  with 
Mr.  Beecher  in  the  editorship  of  the  "Christian  Union." 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  S33 

The  objections  will  at  once  occur  to  the  reader  of  the 
foregoing  pages.  It  was  another  experiment,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  that  my  life  thus  far  had  been  nothing  / 
but  a  series  of  experiments.  I  had  been  an  experimental 
lawyer,  an  experimental  pastor,  an  experimental  secre- 
tary, an  experimental  author,  and  now  it  was  proposed 
that  I  should  exchange  one  experiment  in  editorship 
for  another  experiment  in  editorship.  The  paper  to 
which  I  was  invited  had  gone  through  a  boom  and  a  col- 
lapse, and  it  is  difficult  to  say  which  is  the  greater  blow 
to  permanent  prosperity.  But  this  very  fact  appealed  to 
me.  Because  some  of  Mr.  Beecher's  old  friends  had 
turned  against  him  and  others  had  deserted  him  and 
were  maintaining  a  neutral  attitude,  I  wished  publicly 
to  identify  myself  with  him.  I  wanted  to  stand  where 
some  of  the  shots  aimed  at  him  would  strike  me.  I  had 
obtained  something  of  a  reputation,  and  believed  that 
joining  him  in  his  newspaper  enterprise  would  be  a  dis- 
tinct, and  possibly  an  important,  advantage  to  him. 
The  atmosphere  of  the  Tract  Society  was  charged  with 
suspicion  if  not  with  hostility  to  him  and  to  much  for 
which  he  stood;  so  much  so  that  when  I  penned  the  edi- 
torial in  the  "Illustrated  Christian  Weekly"  charac- 
terizing the  accusations  of  Mr.  Beecher  as  a  product  of 
"jealous  malice"  I  was  by  no  means  certain  that  it 
would  not  be  objected  to  by  some  members  of  the  pub- 
lication committee,  and  I  had  decided  that  if  such  ob- 
jection was  made  I  would  resign  my  position.  Most 
important  of  all  the  considerations  in  favor  of  the  change 
was  the  additional  freedom  which  it  promised  me.  I  be-  / 
lieved  heartily  in  the  purpose  and  spirit  of  the  "Chris-  ^y 
tian  Union"  as  they  had  been  defined  by  Mr.  Beecher 
in  his  salutatory.  The  opportunity  to  have  some  share 
in  promoting  the  unity  of  Christendom,  not  by  an  or- 


334  REMINISCENCES 

ganic  union  of  all  churches  in  one  church,  but  by  the 
cooperation  of  all  churches  in  the  teaching  of  Christian 
truth  and  the  inspiration  of  Christian  life,  constituted  a 
strong  appeal  to  me. 

After  much  deliberation  and  many  conferences  be- 
tween the  managers  of  the  "Christian  Union"  and 
myself,  I  accepted  the  invitation.  These  conferences  ex- 
tended from  the  last  of  April  into  August.  There  were 
some  important  changes  that  had  to  be  made,  which, 
though  they  seemed  wise  both  to  them  and  to  me,  could 
not  be  settled  upon  without  considerable  deliberation. 
The  Christian  Union  Publication  Company  owned  a 
printing-press,  bought  when  its  circulation  was  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty  thousand.  For  such  a  press  it  had  no 
need,  nor  could  it  find  employment  for  it  unless  it  was 
to  open  a  job  printing  office.  It  was  disposed  of.  The 
by-laws  of  the  company  gave  to  Mr.  Beecher  absolute 
authority  to  determine  what  should  go  into  the  "Chris- 
tian Union,"  whether  in  its  literary  or  its  advertising 
pages.  The  trustees  conferred  on  the  associate  editor, 
in  the  absence  of  the  editor-in-chief,  this  authority.  As 
the  editor-in-chief  was  always  absent,  my  authority 
was  practically  absolute.  My  name  was  put  with  Mr. 
Beecher's  at  the  head  of  the  columns.  Whether  Mr. 
Beecher  wrote  much  or  little,  no  subscriber  could  justly 
complain  that  he  was  promised  Beecher  and  given  only 
Abbott.  Finally,  it  was  agreed  that  I  should  have  one 
full  year  to  make  trial  of  my  abilities;  after  that  time 
the  contract  between  myself  and  the  company  could  be 
terminated  by  either  party  on  reasonable  notice  to  the 
other.  I  have  never  wanted  to  work  for  any  employer 
after  he  ceased  to  want  my  work. 

From  the  very  first  Mr.  Beecher  put  the  whole  con- 
trol of  the  paper  unreservedly  into  my  hands.   Thereto- 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  335 

fore  the  proof  of  the  "Christian  Union"  had  been  sent 
to  him  every  Monday  morning  and  his  revisions  called 
for  Monday  night.  Sometimes  those  revisions  had  been 
considerable,  on  one  or  two  occasions  revolutionary. 
The  first  Saturday  after  I  had  assumed  charge  the  fore- 
man of  the  printing-office  came  to  me  to  know  whether 
the  proofs  should  be  sent  as  usual.  This  was  my  first 
knowledge  of  the  custom.  I  considered  a  moment,  then 
replied  in  the  negative.  If  I  sent  them,  Mr.  Beecher 
would  consider  himself  obliged  to  revise  them;  if  I  did 
not  send  them  and  he  wished  to  revise  them,  he  could 
send  for  them.  He  never  asked  for  them,  and  they  were 
never  sent.  I  think  he  was  glad  to  be  rid  of  a  disagree- 
able task. 

In  entering  on  my  new  field,  I  remembered  my  father's 
principle  that  it  is  a  law  of  morals,  as  of  physics,  that  to 
move  from  one  point  to  another  it  is  necessary  to  pass 
through  all  the  intermediate  points,  and  I  was  careful 
not  to  signalize  my  assumption  of  editorial  reform  by 
any  sudden  changes  in  the  paper.  The  most  important 
change  was  the  gradual  transformation  of  the  "Christian 
Union"  from  a  weekly  periodical  of  "generally  enter- 
taining and  instructive  literature"  to  a  weekly  history 
and  interpretation  of  current  events.  This  change  was 
only  gradually  brought  about.  The  immediate  effect 
of  it  was  the  change  of  what  had  been  a  series  of  inci- 
dental editorial  paragraphs  into  a  systematic  paragraph 
history  of  the  week.  I  had  introduced  such  a  feature 
into  the  "Illustrated  Christian  Weekly,"  to  which  I 
gave  the  title  of  "The  Outlook." 

There  was,  of  course,  nothing  original  in  such  a  para- 
graph account  of  the  week.  The  London  "Spectator" 
had  given  its  readers  such  a  history,  perhaps  the  New 
York  "Nation"  also.    The  similar  department  in  the 


336  REMINISCENCES 

"Christian  Union"  differed  from  those  of  its  predeces- 
sors in  being  prophetic  rather  than  historical.  I  do  not 
mean  that  it  undertook  to  foretell  the  future.  But  it 
undertook,  not  merely  to  narrate  the  events  of  the  week, 
but  to  interpret  them;  to  turn  the  mind  of  the  reader 
toward  the  future  and  help  him  to  see  in  what  direction 
current  history  was  moving.  Tliis  endeavor  was  founded 
on  the  faith  that  all  human  progress  is  a  divinely  ordered 
progress,  and  that  all  events  are  to  be  measured,  not  by 
their  relation  to  a  political  or  a  church  organization,  but 
by  their  relation  to  human  welfare  and  human  develop- 
ment. In  this  endeavor  I  have  always  been  guided  by 
my  faith  that  the  solution  of  all  problems,  whether  in- 
dividual or  social,  is  to  be  found  in  the  principles  in- 
/  culcated  and  in  the  spirit  possessed  by  Jesus  Chriat.  In 
the  early  days  of  the  "Christian  Union"  I  myself  wrote 
nearly  the  whole  of  this  weekly  history.  In  doing  so  the 
model  I  followed  was  found  in  the  Hebrew  prophets  and 
in  the  four  Gospels. 

From  the  first  it  was  my  aim  to  make  the  paper  Chris- 
tian without  making  it  either  theological  or  ecclesiastical. 
My  purpose  was  defined  for  me  and  in  considerable 
measure  inspired  in  me  by  my  father.  An  extract  from 
one  of  his  letters,  written  to  me  five  years  before,  when 
I  was  laying  out  the  plans  for  the  "Illustrated  Christian 
Weekly,"  defines  this  indefinable  spirit.  The  best  way, 
he  said,  for  a  mother  to  influence  her  children  is  to  make 
her  children  love  her,  and  then  to  be  herself  what  she 
wishes  them  to  be. 

So  my  idea  of  what  the  conductors  of  such  a  religious  paper 
should  aim  at  is  not  to  prove  religious  truth  by  such  "  discus- 
sions" as  you  refer  to  in  your  letter,  but  simply  to  make  people 
like  the  paper  and  then  express  in  it  the  truths  and  sentiments 
we  wish  them  to  imbibe. 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  337 

If  this  view  is  correct,  the  true  policy  would  be,  not  to  make 
the  paper  exclusively  religious,  but  to  make  it  a  general  store- 
house (of  course  not  to  too  great  an  extent)  of  everything  that 
would  be  useful,  entertaining,  and  instructive  for  the  family 
and  the  fireside.  Making  books  or  publications  too  exclu- 
sively religious  tends  in  some  degree  to  dissociate  religious  senti- 
ments and  thoughts  from  the  ordinary  affairs  and  avocations 
of  life,  whereas  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  desirable  that  the 
two  sets  of  ideas  and  feelings  should  be  indissolubly  blended. 

When,  in  1876,  I  became,  jointly  with  Mr.  Beecher, 
editor  of  the  "Christian  Union,"  it  was  published  at 
27  Park  Place.  It  employed  no  shorthand  writers  and 
no  typewriting  machines.  Its  circulation  was  not  quite 
fifteen  thousand.  It  had  one  floor  devoted  to  the  edi- 
torial and  business  offices,  and  a  loft  used  as  a  compos- 
ing-room. The  editorial  offices  were  separated  from  the 
business  offices  only  by  a  partition  which  did  not  reach 
the  ceiling,  so  that  anything  that  went  on  in  the  public 
room  was  liable  to  be  an  interruption  to  the  editors. 
Colonel  Charles  L.  Norton,  who  had  conducted  the 
paper  for  the  year  following  Mr.  Merriam's  retirement, 
remained  as  managing  editor.  John  Habberton  was  also 
connected  with  it  as  a  special  contributor  and  occasional 
editorial  writer.  One  other  young  man  assistant  was 
employed  to  prepare  the  department  known  as  "Re- 
ligious Intelligence,"  which  consisted  of  gossipy  items 
concerning  churches  and  ministers  of  all  denominations 
and  all  sections  of  the  country,  a  department  which, 
after  undergoing  several  changes,  was  finally  abandoned. 

For  the  last  five  years  the  circulation  of  "The  Out- 
look" has  averaged  from  eight  to  ten  times  the  circula- 
tion the  "Christian  Union"  had  thirty-eight  years  ago. 
It  has  a  staff  of  seven  editors,  each  having  his  own  room, 
four  stated  editorial  contributors  on  special  topics,  and 
correspondents  in  different  parts  of  the  country  on  whom 


S38  REMINISCENCES 

it  depends  for  special  information.  The  subjects  treated 
cover  a  much  broader  range,  comprising  every  depart- 
y  ment  of  life.  The  journal  is  more  sociological,  less  theo- 
logical, but,  I  hope,  not  less  religious.  Every  week  the 
editors  meet  for  conference,  spend  two  or  three  hours  in 
discussing  the  important  events  to  be  treated  and  in  com- 
paring views  as  to  the  meaning  of  these  events  and  their 
proper  interpretation;  and  the  paragraph  history  of  the 
week,  which  thirty  years  ago  I  wrote  almost  entirely 
myself,  is  now  the  product  of  a  number  of  minds  acting 
in  cooperation  after  joint  deliberation  and  often  con- 
siderable correspondence.  Each  issue  of  "The  Outlook" 
is  essentially  the  product  of  team  work.  My  experience 
of  the  inspirational  effect  of  writing  "with  the  handcuffs 
off"  has  been  of  great  value  to  me  in  my  editorial  career. 
No  editor  ever  writes  for  "The  Outlook"  anything  other 
than  his  sincerest  convictions. 

From  the  first  my  wife,  whose  versatility  during  almost 
fifty  years  of  married  life  was  ever  a  new  surprise  to  me, 
was  an  unoflBcial  co-editor.  She  read  manuscripts,  wrote 
letters,  gave  me  her  critical  judgment  on  books,  coun- 
seled with  me  as  to  policies,  was  the  best,  because  the 
severest,  critic  of  my  editorials,  and  did  much  to  de- 
velop a  department  of  the  paper  for  which  I  had  neither 
time,  inclination,  nor  ability  —  its  domestic  side.  Out 
of  this  grew  what  was  for  several  years  a  characteristic 
feature  of  the  paper,  its  "Aunt  Patience  Department." 
As  "Aunt  Patience"  she  opened  a  correspondence  with 
the  children  of  the  homes  into  which  the  paper  went. 
She  received  many  hundreds  of  letters  from  children  of 
all  ages,  published  some  of  them  with  comments, 
answered  others  personally.  Every  year  she  sent  to 
her  correspondents  a  specially  prepared  Christmas  card 
containing  some  appropriate  motto  of  her  selection,  as. 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  339 

"The  virtue  lies  in  the  struggle,  not  in  the  prize,"  or  of 
her  origination,  as,  "May  this  blessed  Christmas  help 
us  to  be  more  strong  to  resist,  patient  to  endure,  con- 
stant to  persevere."  After  the  department  had  been 
continued  for  two  or  three  years  the  letters  of  the  new 
group  of  children  repeated  in  substance  the  letters  pre- 
viously published,  the  department  became  to  the  general 
reader  monotonous,  and  was  discontinued.  In  vain  I 
urged  her  to  continue  it  in  a  new  form,  substituting  for 
the  children's  letters  her  own  editorials  of  counsel  to 
them.  She  was  too  self -distrustful  to  write  for  the  public, 
nor  could  I  persuade  her  that  the  public  was  made  up  of 
individuals,  and  what  would  interest  one  child  would  in- 
terest ten  thousand  children.  But  as  long  as  she  lived 
we  met  from  time  to  time  fathers  and  mothers  who 
greeted  her  warmly  as  the  "Aunt  Patience"  of  their 
childhood. 

In  1879  Mr.  Hamilton  W.  Mabie  joined  the  editorial 
staff,  and  soon  so  proved  his  rare  ability  as  an  interpreta- 
tive critic  that  the  literary  department  of  the  paper  was 
put  under  his  charge.  In  1884  he  was  surprised  one  morn- 
ing by  finding  that  I  had  placed  his  name  with  mine  at  the 
head  of  the  paper  as  Associate  Editor.  The  subsequent 
years  of  literary  partnership  have  been  years  of  deepen- 
ing spiritual  friendship  which  nothing  ever  has,  and  I 
believe  nothing  ever  can,  sever.  Other  editors  have  from 
time  to  time  been  added  to  what  we  are  accustomed  to 
call  "The  Outlook  family,"  which  includes  all  who  co- 
operate in  the  publication,  from  the  errand  boy  to  the 
editor-in-chief.  To  narrate  here  the  successive  changes 
which  out  of  the  "Christian  Union"  have  developed 
"The  Outlook"  would  take  me  too  far  from  this  purely 
personal  narrative.  There  are,  however,  two  important 
events,  one  making,  the  other  reflecting,  a  direct  and 


/ 
/ 


340  REMINISCENCES 

important  change  in  its  character,  which  must  here  be 
mentioned  in  order  to  complete  this  chapter  in  its  his- 
tory. 

In  1878  or  '79  —  I  am  not  sure  as  to  the  date  —  Mr. 
Lawson  Valentine  bought  a  farm  in  Orange  County 
about  six  or  seven  miles  from  my  home  in  Cornwall, 
and  began  attending  the  little  church  where  I  was  preach- 
ing. Of  course  my  wife  and  I  called  upon  the  family. 
So  commenced  a  friendship  which  is  one  of  the  most 
sacred  of  the  many  friendships  which  have  enriched  my 
life.  It  has  continued  to  the  second  and  third  genera- 
tions. Mr.  Valentine's  son-in-law  is  the  vice-president 
of  The  Outlook  Company,  and  a  grandson  is  one  of  my 
associates  on  the  editorial  staff. 

I  shall  not  undertake  an  analysis  of  Mr.  Lawson 
Valentine's  character.  ,  Genius  is  difficult,  perhaps  im- 
possible, of  definition.  It  has  been  called  an  infinite 
capacity  for  taking  pains.  That  is  exactly  what  it  is 
not.  I  know  of  no  better  sign  of  it  than  Owen  Mere- 
dith's saying,  "Genius  does  what  it  must,  talent  does 
what  it  can";  no  better  definition  of  it  than  Coleridge's, 
"Genius  is  the  power  of  carrying  the  feelings  of  child- 
hood into  the  powers  of  manhood."  To  genius  life  is 
always  fresh,  novel,  a  new  call  to  adventure.  It  includes 
fertility,  originality,  spontaneity,  a  certain  unlikeness 
to  other  men.  Within  its  domain  it  is  audacious.  It 
both  dreams  and  dares.  If  this  be  a  true  estimate,  then 
Mr.  Lawson  Valentine  was  as  truly  a  genius  as  any  man 
I  have  ever  intimately  known.  I  compare  him  in  my 
own  mind  to  an  electric  dynamo.  He  was  charged  with 
a  perfectly  exhaustless  current  of  energy,  but  he  needed 
a  transmitter  to  convert  that  energy  into  practical 
action. 

From  the  first  I  think  he  liked  me;  from  the  first  I 


LAWSOX   VALEXTIXE 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  341 

know  I  liked  him.  The  liking  grew  into  admiration, 
then  into  deep  affection.  He  was  often  an  enigma  to 
me,  but  always  a  fascinating  enigma.  His  suggestions 
were  often  puzzles,  and  I  could  not  always  find  the  an- 
swer; but  studying  them  was  always  worth  while.  On 
the  hill  above  his  country  house  he  made  a  camping 
ground,  built  a  road  to  it,  and  opened  it  to  the  public. 
They  came  and  carved  their  names  upon  the  trees.  In- 
stead of  a  prohibition  he  put  up  a  great  board,  and  on  it 
a  sign,  "Carve  your  names  here,"  and  the  public  com- 
plied. He  once  suggested  to  me  that  the  New  York 
churches  all  close  their  doors  for  one  Sunday,  send  their 
congregations  out  to  hunt  up  suffering  to  be  relieved  and 
need  to  be  supplied,  and  put  on  the  church  doors  the 
notice:  "Closed  for  the  day  to  enable  the  congregation 
to  practice  Christianity  instead  of  listening  to  it." 
Quite  impracticable.'*  Very  true.  And  yet  one  can  im- 
agine how,  if  the  churches  could  have  been  induced  to 
take  such  action,  the  country  would  have  been  shaken 
by  the  message  from  center  to  circumference,  as  no 
preaching  could  possibly  have  shaken  it.  Some  letters 
written  between  1884  and  1891,  during  which  time  Mr. 
Valentine  was  active  as  an  inspiring  and  directing  spirit 
in  the  "Christian  Union,"  lie  before  me.  From  them  I 
make  some  characteristic  extracts :  — 

Atlanta,  Ga.      ' 

My  dear  Doctor  :  —  I  hope  that  things  may  work  so 
favorably  that  I  may  some  day  hear  you  lecture  in  this  city 
under  this  text:  — 

"the  war  is  over" 

I  think  the  whole  South  is  fifty-one  to  eighty-one  per  cent 
ready  for  an  hour's  talk  with  your  spirit  of  Union  as  the  warp 
and  encouraging  words  as  the  filling.  What  say  you?  Our 
paper  is  wanted  here  if  known. 

1884.     My  chief  desire  is,  as  in  the  past,  to  strengthen  your 


342  REMINISCENCES 

hands  so  you  can  do  your  work  in  the  best  way  to  the  largest 
number.  We  are  on  the  edge  of  labor  matters  that  will  be 
greater  than  any  of  this  century.  The  "  C.  U."  is  now  in  shape 
to  lead  in  that  evolution  at  least  as  one  power. 

I  take  the  cry  of  "Stop  my  paper"  as  the  best  evidence  that 
the  editors  are  trying  at  least  to  do  their  duty,  and  I  would  n't 
have  an  editor  that  could  n't  draw  this  cry  now  and  then. 

Isle  of  Wight.  I  vote  England  and  the  Continent  for  4,  8, 
12  months  for  our  editor-in-chief  as  soon  as  it  can  be  brought 
about.  Now  I  must  wait  the  vote  of  the  office  and  your  action 
in  Faith. 

I  have  always  been  a  reader  of  Carlyle  and  Emerson.  Now 
what  do  they  mean  for  this  generation?  Is  it  nothing?  .  .  . 
Editors,  what  say  you  to  the  wisdom  of  Carlyle  and  Emerson 
to  help  those  of  the  years  85,  86,  87,  88,  and  then  a  new  style 
of  President  and  Presidential  election  ?  Editors,  what  say  you 
to  the  power  of  your  press  to  bring  to  life  again  these  two 
minds  for  the  good  of  the  people? 

I  have  printed  these  extracts  in  advance  of  their 
chronological  place  in  the  narrative  because  I  want  my 
readers  to  know  my  friend  as  he  is  interpreted  by  his 
own  words. 

And  by  his  deeds.  I  think  I  have  never  seen  a  man 
so  possessed  by  a  passion  for  helping  his  fellow-men.  It 
was  not  exactly  philanthropy.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
his  boundless  energy  called  on  him  to  help  every  en- 
deavor for  human  welfare  if  it  seemed  to  him  whole- 
hearted, much  as  a  soldier  in  battle  might  be  eager  to  be 
sent  to  the  front  with  every  detachment,  whether  it 
was  cavalry,  infantry,  or  artillery.  He  found  a  man 
struggling  with  the  problem  of  establishing  in  Cornwall 
a  village  paper,  and  gave  him  money,  advice,  and  cour- 
age. The  immediate  result  was  failure;  the  ultimate 
result  an  excellent  and  successful  local  weekly  paper, 
though  conducted  by  wholly  different  hands.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  incorporation  of  the  village  came  up  for  dis- 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  343 

cussion.  It  seemed  to  us  who  lived  within  the  village 
limits  essential  to  our  prosperity,  and  no  one,  I  think, 
contributed  more  to  the  successful  campaign  than  he, 
who  lived  five  or  six  miles  away.  He  wanted  me  to 
secure  the  appointment  of  a  committee,  of  which  I 
should  be  one,  to  plan  and  construct  some  mountain 
paths  up  Storm  King  for  pedestrians.  Nothing  came  of 
that  suggestion  either.  The  work  I  had  in  hand  took 
all  my  time  and  strength.  I  have  always  held  that,  as 
it  is  a  wise  financial  rule  to  spend  less  money  than  one 
earns,  so  it  is  a  wise  hygienic  rule  to  spend  less  strength 
than  one  can  accumulate.  Perhaps  it  is  for  that  reason 
that  I  am  in  better  health  at  seventy-nine  than  I  was 
at  seventeen.  Mr.  Valentine's  farm  of  five  or  six  hun- 
dred acres,  named  for  his  wife  Houghton  Farm,  he  made 
into  an  experimental  station  for  the  study  of  agricul- 
tural problems  and  the  promotion  of  agricultural  in- 
terests. This  farm  was  organized  and  carried  on  as  an 
object-lesson  for  the  benefit  of  the  community,  and 
students  of  agriculture  came  from  far  to  study  its  proc- 
esses and  methods.  One  incident  out  of  many  illustrat- 
ing the  wide  uses  which  the  farm  served  is  furnished  by 
the  coming,  about  1884,  of  a  Japanese  student  to  this 
farm,  where  he  spent  two  years  learning  the  art  of  agri- 
culture by  practical  experience,  and  then  went  back  to 
Japan  to  become  a  professor  and  Dean  of  the  College  of 
Agriculture  in  the  Tohoku  Imperial  University  at  Sap- 
pora,  Japan,  and  a  leader  in  the  agricultural  develop- 
ment of  his  native  land. 

Since  Mr.  Valentine  was  what  he  was,  it  is  not  strange 
that  he  speedily  became  interested  in  the  work  which  I 
was  trying  to  do  in  the  "Christian  Union."  And  since 
he  had  a  genius  for  originating  suggestions  and  I  had 
some  talent  for  accepting  them,  working  them  over  and 


344  REMINISCENCES 

utilizing  them,  it  is  not  strange  that  we  soon  became 
fast  friends.  His  interest,  I  think,  at  first  was  simply  a 
wish  to  help  me  in  what  I  was  trying  to  do.  But  partly 
because  I  was  eager  to  get  the  benefit  of  his  genius  — 
and  all,  even  his  friends,  were  not  equally  eager  —  his 
interest  soon  grew  first  into  a  desire  to  have  a  share  in 
what  I  was  doing  and  then  into  a  desire  to  widen  the 
scope  as  well  as  to  promote  the  progress  of  my  enter- 
prise. He  and  Mr.  Beecher  were  congenial  spirits.  I 
find  among  my  letters  a  brief  correspondence,  so  brief 
and  so  characteristic  of  them  both  that  I  reproduce  it 
here.  I  think  it  grew  out  of  a  suggestion  of  mine  that 
we  meet  at  luncheon  from  time  to  time  and  discuss 
around  the  lunch  table  plans  for  developing  the  "Chris- 
tian Union."  This  elicited  from  him  the  following 
telegram :  — 

I  like  your  Delmonico;  keep  at  work  on  this  line  all  summer. 

L.  Valentine. 

I  sent  the  telegram  to  Mr.  Beecher,  and  received  it 
back  with  this  note  indorsed  on  the  back:  — 

You  are  not  the  only  fellows  that  like  Delmonico.  We  are 
willing  to  patronize  him  all  summer  if  you  will  pay  the  bill. 

H.  W.  Beecher. 

This  was  two  months  after  Mr.  Valentine  had  bought 
some  of  the  stock  of  the  "Christian  Union"  and  was 
taking  an  active  interest  in  its  affairs.  His  interest,  how- 
ever, was  still  in  me  rather  than  in  the  paper,  and  he 
bought  this  stock,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  primarily  for 
the  purpose  of  enabling  me  to  buy  it  of  him  on  the  in- 
stallment plan,  the  only  method  which  was  for  me  prac- 
ticable. Six  years  later  he  purchased  a  controlling 
interest  in  the  "Christian  Union,"  and  became,  in  fact. 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  345 

almost  its  sole  owner.   This  came  about  in  the  following 
way. 

I  had  flattered  myself  that  I  could  get  some  "copy'* 
for  the  "Christian  Union"  out  of  Mr.  Beecher.  My 
plan  was  to  get  him  to  come  into  the  editorial  rooms  on 
Monday  mornings  and  chat,  and  with  a  shorthand 
vvTiter  get  enough  out  of  his  chat  to  make  a  Beecher  edi- 
torial every  week.  But  the  plan  did  not  succeed.  Once, 
in  conversation  with  me,  Mr.  Beecher  compared  him- 
self to  a  town  pump:  "Any  one,"  he  said,  "can  get  a 
drink  if  he  will  work  the  handle."  But  on  Monday  morn- 
ing the  well  was  dry  —  no  water  came.  He  would  chat 
entertainingly,  but  not  on  current  affairs,  and  rarely  with 
any  such  continuity  of  purpose  as  made  his  talk  matter 
for  an  article.  For  a  time  he  indulged  himself  in  the 
pleasing  delusion  that  next  month  or  next  season  or  next 
year  he  was  going  to  take  hold  of  editorial  work  with 
vigor.  But  he  never  did.  One  could  not  blame  him. 
The  "Christian  Union"  had  never  paid  him  a  dollar  in 
dividends,  and  he  had  paid  it  a  good  many  dollars  in 
capital.  It  never  paid  him  any  salary.  There  were  other 
journals  always  ready  with  their  check  for  anything  he 
would  send  them.  The  lecture  platform  was  always 
open  to  him,  and  its  remunerations  were  large.  He  could 
talk  easily,  but  writing  grew  more  and  more  irksome, 
so  in  1881  he  resigned  as  editor,  and  in  the  spring  or 
summer  of  1884  he  and  his  friends  proposed  to  sell 
their  financial  interests.  The  suggestion  came  from  him, 
neither  directly  nor  indirectly  from  me.  Negotiations 
continued  intermittently  throughout  the  summer  — 
was  the  most  anxious  summer  of  my  life.  There  was 
another  bidder  in  the  field,  but  Mr.  Valentine  was  too 
good  a  business  man  to  compete  in  an  auction  against  a 
competitor  who,  for  aught  he  knew,  might  be  bidding 


346  REMINISCENCES 

in  order  to  raise  the  price.  In  December,  1884,  the 
negotiations  ended  satisfactorily  to  him,  and  on  the 
1st  of  January,  1885,  he  became  the  principal  owner 
and  the  President  of  the  Christian  Union  Company. 
Mr.  James  Stillman  was,  next  to  Mr.  Valentine,  the 
largest  purchaser.  Like  Mr.  Valentine,  he  bought,  not 
as  a  promising  investment,  but  to  aid  me,  a  personal 
friend,  in  my  work. 

What  Mr.  Valentine  desired  to  do  for  the  "Christian 
Union"  he  described  in  a  characteristic  paragraph  in  a 
letter  to  my  wife.  "I  am  trying,"  he  wrote  her,  "to  or- 
ganize each  department  from  the  editor-in-chief  down 
to  the  newest  boy  coming  in  to-morrow,  to  do  each  their 
different  work  independently,  and  like  a  good  watch 
let  us  bring  in  the  wheels  all  perfectly  made,  put  them 
together,  wind  up  the  machine,  put  a  good  motto  into 
it,  and  let  it  run  and  keep  as  good  time  as  an  English 
Fodsham."  What  he  did  in  carrying  out  this  purpose, 
what  experiments  he  made,  what  obstacles  he  met,  what 
disappointments  he  encountered,  what  were  his  failures 
and  what  his  successes  —  and  his  every  failure  only 
nerved  him  to  a  new  endeavor,  every  success  only  aroused 
in  him  a  new  enthusiasm  —  is  not  to  be  here  narrated; 
for  this  is  not  a  history  of  "The  Outlook,"  but  a  history  of 
myself.  Except  for  a  brief  period,  when  I  unsuccessfully 
attempted  to  combine  the  work  of  business  manager 
under  Mr,  Valentine's  direction  with  that  of  editor-in- 
chief,  I  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  business  administra- 
tion of  the  paper.  And  at  no  time  in  its  existence  did 
either  Mr.  Valentine  or  Mr.  Stillman  make  the  slightest 
endeavor  to  direct  its  editorial  policy.  I  have  always 
written  with  an  absolutely  untrammeled  pen.  At  times 
the  editorial  policy  has  cost  us  hundreds  of  subscribers; 
at  times  it  has  cost  us  hundreds  of  dollars  in  advertis- 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  347 

ing.  But  under  no  business  management  has  any  effort 
ever  been  made  to  modify  its  editorial  principles.  The 
tradition  established  by  Mr.  Beecher  in  the  creation  of 
the  "Christian  Union"  and  confirmed  by  Mr.  Valentine 
in  its  subsequent  history  has  continued  unmodified  to 
this  day. 

Looking  back,  I  can  now  see  what  neither  Mr.  Valen- 
tine nor  I  realized  at  the  time,  that  his  influence  on  the 
paper  led  logically  to  a  change  in  its  name  because  it  led 
to  a  change  in  its  character. 

Mr.  Beecher  had  started  the  "Christian  Union"  for 
the  purpose  of  expressing  a  Christianity  broader  than 
any  sect.  But,  though  not  the  paper  of  any  church,  it 
was  still  a  church  paper.  It  interpreted  the  thought  and 
life  of  all  the  churches,  though  with  a  breadth  of  vision 
which  saw  the  Christian  spirit  alike  in  the  Episcopalian 
and  the  Friend,  in  the  Protestant  and  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic. But  I  gradually  began  to  realize  that  Christianity 
is  not  only  larger  than  any  church,  but  larger  than  all 
the  churches;  that  a  man  can  possess  the  Christian 
spirit,  not  only  if  he  is  a  Friend  or  a  Unitarian,  but  if  he 
is  a  Jew  or  an  agnostic.  My  acquaintance  with  the  works 
of  Matthew  Arnold  and  Darwin  and  Huxley  and  Tyn- 
dall  not  only  gave  me  a  respect  for  their  opinions,  but 
a  respect  for  their  spirit.  I  found  an  understanding  of 
the  Bible  in  Arnold,  a  fairness  of  statement  in  Darwin, 
an  eagerness  for  truth  in  Huxley,  and  a  prophetic  vision 
in  Tyndall,  which  seemed  to  me  sometimes  conspicu- 
ously absent  from  the  writings  of  the  churchmen,  and 
especially  from  the  columns  of  the  church  press.  This 
growing  conviction  was  intensified  by  my  personal  ac- 
quaintance with  some  agnostics  and  some  Jews.  The 
most  profound  influence  upon  our  character  is  often  ex- 
ercised when  neither  he  who  exercises  it  nor  he  who  ex- 


/ 


348  REMINISCENCES 

periences  it  is  conscious  of  it.  Such  an  influence  was 
exerted  upon  me  by  one  of  my  neighbors  and  friends  in 
Cornwall  —  Mr.  E.  A.  Matthiessen. 

He  was  a  well-known  business  man,  by  birth  a  Dane, 
in  his  religious  opinions  an  agnostic.  He  never  went  to 
church.  Many  of  the  beliefs  which  I  had  entertained 
from  childhood  he  absolutely  disbelieved,  and  some 
which  I  had  regarded  as  essential  he  neither  believed 
nor  disbelieved.  If  I  were  to  define  his  theology,  I  should 
say  that  he  regarded  the  Bible  as  a  book  of  primitive 
religion,  containing  much  that  is  elevating  but  much 
that  is  barbaric;  Jesus  Christ  as  a  noble  man  and  the 
teacher  of  noble  sentiments,  but  by  no  means  infallible; 
the  invisible  as  always  the  unknowable,  and  therefore 
God  and  immortality  unknown.  And  yet  when  two 
church  members  in  Cornwall  became  alienated  and  the 
quarrel  between  them  was  a  matter  of  town  gossip  it 
was  he  who  sought  to  reunite  them,  and  for  that  pur- 
pose quoted  to  them  the  words  of  their  Master.  His  in- 
tegrity, public  spirit,  and  personal  philanthropy  made 
him  the  honored  friend  of  all  classes  in  the  village.  The 
difference  in  our  philosophies  did  not  prevent  us  from 
becoming  fast  friends.  His  wife  and  my  wife  also  be- 
came warmly  attached  to  each  other.  She  was  a  devout 
Roman  Catholic  and  he  an  agnostic,  yet  a  happier  home 
I  have  never  known.  An  ounce  of  fact  is  worth  a  ton  of 
theory.  My  previous  theory  that  certain  theological 
convictions  are  essential  to  a  Christlike  character  dis- 
appeared before  the  convincing  argument  of  my  friend's 
life.  He  died  many  years  ago;  yet  I  hope  that  he  may 
know  of  this  testimony  to  the  influence  which  his  life 
and  character  have  exercised  on  my  life,  and  I  am  sure 
on  many  others  wholly  unsuspected  by  him. 

Thus  when  it  was  proposed  to  change  the  name  of  the 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM  349 

paper,  I  was  not  wholly  unprepared  for  the  suggestion. 
There  were  business  reasons  for  the  change.  There  was 
a  "Christian  Advocate,"  and  a  "Christian  Intelli- 
gencer," and  a  "Christian  Herald,"  and  a  "Christian 
Messenger,"  and  a  "Christian  Register,"  and  a  simple 
"Christian"  —  in  all,  I  believe,  some  twenty  papers 
which  carried  the  name  Christian  as  part  of  their  title. 
Subscriptions  intended  for  one  of  them  sometimes  came 
to  us;  subscriptions  intended  for  us  sometimes  went  to 
one  of  them.  Our  title  naturally  caused  the  public  to 
classify  us  with  these  denominational  organs.  Non- 
churchmen  looked  upon  the  "Christian  Union"  with 
suspicion  as  an  ecclesiastical  journal;  churchmen  looked 
upon  it  with  suspicion  as  not  ecclesiastical  enough.  I 
began  to  feel  a  disinclination  to  the  title,  as  I  have  always 
felt  a  disinclination  to  white  neckties  and  ministerial 
clothes;  uniforms  are  not  to  my  taste.  When  I  was  start- 
ing the  "Illustrated  Christian  Weekly,"  I  had  consulted 
with  my  father  as  to  a  title;  "Glad  Tidings"  had  been 
suggested.     He  wrote  me  in  reply:  — 

As  to  name,  we  do  not  think  of  anything  we  like  better  than 
"Glad  Tidings,"  though  I  do  not  myseK  quite  like  that.  I  / 
shrink  from  anything  which  is  sensational  or  emotional,  or  is 
connected  with  feeling  in  any  way,  in  a  name,  which  is  neces- 
sarily to  be  handled  so  freely  and  knocked  about,  even,  so 
rudely  by  clerks,  printers,  salesmen,  and  newsboys.  To  hear 
a  boy  run  into  a  news-room  and  call  out  roughly  for  "thirteen 
'Glad  Tidings'"  does  not  sound  just  right. 

But  more  important  than  any  of  these  considerations 
was,  hardly  a  conviction,  but  an  ill-defined  feeling,  that 
during  the  thirteen  years  since  the  "Christian  Union" 
was  founded  it  had  gradually  and  unconsciously  broad- 
ened its  scope  and  purpose.  It  had  become  something 
more  than  a  representative  of  the  truths  and  principles 


350  REMINISCENCES 

held  by  all  Christian  churches.  It  had  become  an  inter- 
preter of  the  world's  current  history.  It  was  an  outlook 
upon  the  time  in  which  we  were  living.  It  was  still  a 
Christian  paper  in  its  spirit  and  purpose;  but  it  wished 
to  be  so  Christian  that  it  might  express  the  Christian 
spirit  as  expressed  in  the  lives  and  character  of  agnostic, 
Jew,  and  pagan.  In  accordance  with  this  conviction, 
and  after  months  of  deliberation  as  to  whether  it  was 
wise  to  make  any  change,  and,  if  so,  what  the  change 
should  be,  it  adopted  the  title  which  it  had  given  to  the 
review  of  the  week  which  was  a  feature  of  each  issue. 
On  the  1st  of  July,  1893,  it  became  "The  Outlook." 

Mr.  Valentine  did  not  live  to  see  realized  all  his  ideals 
for  "The  Outlook."  He  died  suddenly  at  his  home  in 
Cornwall,  May  5,  1891.  But  he  lived  to  see  the  journal 
which  he  had  done  so  much  to  re-create  established  on  a 
firm  financial  foundation,  with  subscribers  in  every 
State  in  the  Union  and  in  every  civilized  country  abroad, 
its  influence  on  the  life  of  the  community  far  exceeding 
any  I  had  ever  expected,  and  its  business  conducted  by 
associates  who  have  become  his  successors,  inspired  by 
his  purpose  and  imbued  with  his  spirit. 

What,  chiefly  through  "The  Outlook,"  but  also 
through  the  pulpit,  the  platform,  and  occasionally 
through  other  periodicals,  I  have  been  endeavoring  to 
accomplish  in  the  theological,  industrial,  and  political 
life  of  the  community  since  1876,  when  I  became  asso- 
ciated with  Mr.  Beecher  in  the  editorship  of  the  "  Chris- 
tian Union,"  will  be  narrated  in  following  chapters  of 
this  autobiography. 

But  first  I  must  give  an  account  of  my  church  work 
during  the  eleven  years  in  which  I  added  the  duties  of 
pastor  of  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  to  those  of 
editor-in-chief  of  "The  Outlook." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

PLYMOUTH    CHURCH 

HENRY  WARD  BEECHER  is,  in  my  judg- 
ment, the  greatest  orator  I  ever  heard,  and 
easily  takes  a  place  among  the  greatest  orators  of 
the  world.  Less  persuasive  than  Gladstone,  less  keen  and 
rapier-like  than  Wendell  Phillips,  less  dramatic  than  John 
B.  Gough,  less  polished  than  George  William  Curtis, 
less  weighty  than  Daniel  Webster,  he  combined  in  one 
ever-variable  oratory  the  qualities  of  all,  and  was  al- 
ternately persuasive,  keen,  dramatic,  polished,  weighty. 
His  kaleidoscopic  mind  kept  the  habitual  hearer  always 
wondering  what  surprise  would  greet  him  next  Sunday, 
and  the  occasional  hearer  equally  wondering  what  sur- 
prise would  greet  him  in  the  next  sentence.  It  was  not, 
however,  chiefly  these  oratorical  qualities  that  gave  him 
his  permanent  influence;  it  was  his  rare  combination  of 
practical  common  sense  and  spiritual  vision.  He  dis- 
regarded the  phrases  and  forms  of  religion  and  cared 
only  for  its  essential  spirit.  Under  his  leadership  there 
was  developed  a  church  whose  bond  of  union  was  spiritual, 
not  intellectual.  In  its  membership  were  both  Calvin- 
ists  and  Arminians,  Unitarians  and  Trinitarians,  be- 
lievers in  universal  restoration,  in  conditional  immor- 
tality and  in  eternal  punishment,  in  adult  baptism  and 
in  infant  baptism,  in  the  Bible  as  an  infallible  rule  of 
faith  and  practice  and  in  the  Bible  as  the  history  of  the 
development  of  a  nation's  religious  experience,  some  men 


r: 


352  REMINISCENCES 

and  women  temperamentally  Episcopalians  and  others 
temperamentally  Friends.  There  was  a  baptistery  under 
the  pulpit,  and  unbaptized  candidates  for  admission 
to  the  church  decided  for  themselves  whether  they  would 
be  baptized  by  sprinkling  or  by  immersion.  A  more  har- 
monious church  I  have  never  known;  a  more  independ- 
ent membership  I  have  never  known.  The  church  solved 
the  problem  of  uniting  individual  independence  and 
organic  unity. 

Some  understanding  of  the  spirit  of  this  church  and 
of  the  character  and  temperament  of  its  first  pastor 
seems  necessary  to  enable  the  reader  to  understand  the 
nature  of  the  problem  which  confronted  me  during  my 
eleven  years  of  pastoral  labor.^ 

When  I  came  down  to  my  breakfast  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing, March  6,  1887,  my  wife  handed  me  the  morning 
^'        paper    containing    the    statement    that    Henry    Ward 
^        Beecher  was  dying  at  his  home  in  Brooklyn  —  cause,  the 
5/    'J^    S    j*'  bursting  of  a  blood-vessel  in  the  brain  —  of  recovery  no 
'     ^    ^      ^    possibility.   As  a  pastor  I  had  been  familiar  with  death. 
I  had  been  accustomed  from  early  youth  to  look  forward 
to   dying   myself  with   interested  curiosity  —  not  with 
dread,  hardly  with  awe.    Death  has  always  seemed  to 
\-  me  simply  a  journey  to  another  land.    But  I  had  never 

^0  associated  death  with  Mr.  Beecher.    He  was  so  full  of 

^  life.   That  it  would  ever  ebb  had  never  occurred  to  me. 

'v  Like  others,  I  had  always  thought  of  Plymouth  Church 

as  Beecher's  church,  and  could  not  picture  it  to  myself  as 
going  on  without  him.  The  paper  announced  that  on 
Sunday  evening  the  members  of  Plymouth  Church 
would  meet  for  prayer  in  the  lecture-room.    After  my 

^  In  my  Lije  of  Eenry  Ward  Beecher  I  have  given  an  account  of  the  organi- 
zation and  history  of  this  church,  of  which  Mr.  Beecher  was  the  first  pastor, 
and  which  partook  of  his  broad  and  progressive  spirit. 


X 


X 


PLY^IOUTH  CHURCH  353 

morning  church  service  in  Cornwall  I  took  the  train  to 
New  York  to  attend  this  meeting.  Not  for  many  years 
had  I  been  an  enrolled  member  of  Plymouth  Church,  but 
it  was  the  church  of  my  first  love  and  my  church  still. 

A  more  solemnly  sacred  meeting  I  have  never  attended. 
There  was  neither  priest  nor  preacher  to  conduct  it.  It 
was  a  meeting  of  laymen.  Its  utterances  were  not  ad- 
dressed by  a  teacher  to  the  church,  but  were  the  spon- 
taneous expression  of  the  church's  feeling.  Its  spirit 
was  one  of  strange  exaltation;  its  thoughts  not  so  much 
of  the  life  which  was  closing  as  of  the  life  which  was  be- 
ginning. In  the  account  in  the  Book  of  Acts  of  the 
martyrdom  of  Stephen  it  is  said,  "He,  being  full  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  looked  up  steadfastly  into  heaven,  and 
saw  the  glory  of  God,  and  Jesus  standing  on  the  right 
hand  of  God."  Something  of  the  spirit  of  such  a  celestial 
vision  seemed  to  dwell  in  this  meeting.  "If,"  said  Dr. 
Rossiter  W.  Raymond,  "human  weakness  could  be 
controlled  by  the  higher  aspirations  of  the  soul,  or  the 
exertion  of  the  will,  I  would  fain  have  this  hour  a  scene 
of  solemn,  sacred  thanksgiving  and  praise.  You  know 
that  is  what  he  would  have  if  he  could  speak  to  us  — 
our  Greatheart,  our  Paul.  His  message  would  be  that 
which  came  from  the  Roman  prison :  '  Mourn  not  for  me, 
I  am  ready  to  go,  but  be  instant  in  the  work  of  the 
Lord.'" 

Similar  prayer-meetings  were  held  on  Monday, 
Tuesday,  and  Wednesday  evenings.  A  memorial  volume 
contains  a  partial  report  of  these  meetings,  and  from  my 
remarks  on  Monday  evening  the  following  paragraph  was 
selected  for  printing.  I  repeat  it  here  because  it  gives 
the  key  to  the  messages  which,  wholly  unexpectedly  to 
myself,  I  was  called  on  as  temporary  supply  of  the  vacant 
pulpit  to  give  to  the  church  the  following  winter:  — 


354  REMINISCENCES 

Carlyle  has  said  somewhere  that  one  of  the  grandest  words 
in  the  language  is  duty.  With  you  that  has  been  a  pleasure 
which  in  other  churches  was  a  duty.  All  that  is  changed  now. 
Hereafter  you  must  take  that  great  word  "duty"  and  make  it 
your  watchword.  For  forty  years  duty  has  been  a  pleasant 
thing  in  this  church.  The  great  heart  and  brain  and  genius 
that  are  now  stilled  have  made  your  duty  easy  for  you.  Dur- 
ing all  these  years  you  have  been  getting.  Hereafter  you  must 
learn  the  pleasure  of  giving.  You  can  no  longer  come  here  and 
have  one  man  fill  you  from  his  fullness  and  richness,  but  you 
must  learn  to  fill  each  other.  Strength  will  be  given  you  if 
you  ask  for  it;  and  the  Master  who  strengthened  him  will 
strengthen  you. 

At  the  close  of  the  Sabbath  morning  communion 
service  preceding  these  evening  prayer-meetings  a  com- 
mittee was  appointed  to  act  on  behalf  of  the  church  in 
the  existing  emergency,  and  this  committee,  subse- 
quently enlarged,  became  an  advisory  committee  to 
act  on  behalf  of  the  church  in  seeking  for  a  pastor. 
This  committee  wisely  concluded  that  it  would  be  a 
disadvantage  to  the  church  to  hear  candidates.  It  there- 
fore proposed,  on  October  7,  to  the  church  that  "an  ar- 
rangement be  made  with  the  Reverend  Lyman  Abbott, 
editor  of  the  'Christian  Union,'  to  act  as  temporary 
pastor  of  this  church,  supplying  the  pulpit  on  Sunday 
morning  and  evening  (with  the  understanding  that  he 
may  occasionally  exchange  with  other  ministers),  and 
attending  the  Friday  evening  prayer-meeting."  The 
committee  added:  "In  justice  to  Mr.  Abbott,  it  should 
be  plainly  said  that  he  is  not,  and  will  not  become, 
a  candidate  for  the  permanent  pastorate  of  the  church; 
that  he  would  not  undertake  any  other  pastoral  labors 
than  those  indicated;  and  that,  if  he  should  accept  such 
an  arrangement,  it  would  be  for  the  purpose  of  assisting 
us  in  this  emergency  until  a  wise  and  deliberate  choice 
for  the  future  could  be  made." 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  355 

The  church  approved  of  this  plan,  my  associates  in  the 
"Christian  Union"  approved  of  it,  and  I  accepted  the 
invitation.  I  rented  a  small  flat  on  Brooklyn  Heights 
and  moved  there  for  the  winter.  It  had  been  suggested 
to  me  by  a  member  of  the  committee  that  I  could  con- 
tinue to  live  in  Cornwall  and  come  down  for  the  Friday 
and  Sunday  services.  But  I  had  no  old  sermons  to  give 
a  congregation.  In  seventeen  years  I  had  not  written 
a  single  sermon,  and  the  sermons  written  before  that 
time  had  long  since  served  their  only  useful  purpose  in 
kindling  fires.  I  knew  only  one  way  to  preach.  I  must 
study  the  life  of  the  church  and  congregation,  and 
adapt  my  message  to  their  needs,  and  if  I  were  to  do 
this  I  must  live  where  I  should  be  in  continual  contact 
with  the  church.  I  secured  temporarily  the  services  of 
an  assistant,  to  whom  I  gave  a  list  of  all  absentee  mem- 
bers of  the  church  that  he  might  call  on  them.  I  do 
not  think  his  calling  had  any  appreciable  effect  on  the 
congregation;  it  had  some  on  the  Sunday-School.  He 
met  in  his  calls,  however,  with  one  incident  which  has 
always  been  a  psychological  mystery  to  me.  A  Wesleyan 
Methodist  lady  who  lived  near  Plymouth  Church,  but  had 
left  the  congregation  after  Mr.  Beecher's  death,  told  my 
assistant  that  I  excited  her  so  that  she  had  to  hold  on 
to  the  pew  to  prevent  calling  out  a  response;  so  she  had 
left  Plymouth  Church  and  gone  to  Dr.  Talmage's  for 
rest.  To  me  the  lack  of  emotional  appeal  seemed  a 
serious  defect  in  my  preaching,  and  this  estimate  was 
confirmed  by  the  reported  saying  of  a  stranger  that  he 
went  to  Plymouth  Church  one  Sunday,  but  that  morn- 
ing Lyman  Abbott  did  not  preach;  he  only  gave  a  little 
talk  on  religion.  I  will  leave  the  reader  to  reconcile  these 
two  incidents  as  best  he  can. 

I  had  been  supplying  the  pulpit  for  seven  or  eight 


356  REMINISCENCES 

months  when  I  was  asked  by  a  member  of  the  advisory 
committee  whether  I  would  consider  a  call  to  become 
the  permanent  pastor  of  the  church,  with  the  proviso 
that  I  might  continue  my  connection  with  and  my  edi- 
torial direction  of  the  "Christian  Union."  Of  course  I 
took  time  to  consider.  My  editorial  associates  approved, 
and  Mr.  Valentine  was  particularly  desirous  that  I 
should  accept.  The  double  work  had  been  carried  on 
by  me  throughout  the  winter  without  impairment  of 
my  health.  Provision  had  been  made  which  gave  rea- 
sonable assurance  that  the  work  of  the  church  need 
not  be  impaired  and  might  be  increased.  Some  mem- 
bers of  the  congregation  who  had  dropped  off  after  Mr. 
Beecher's  death  had  returned;  some  new  members  had 
come  in  to  take  the  place  of  absentees.  A  disinterested 
and  trustworthy  observer  reported,  as  the  result  of  his 
observation  on  a  Sunday  in  June,  when  congregations 
were  already  beginning  to  scatter,  that  "there  was 
not  a  crowding  in  the  aisles  and  about  the  doors, 
as  there  was  in  the  old  days  when  strangers  from 
abroad  were  attracted  by  the  fame  of  Mr.  Beecher.  But, 
for  all  that,  the  church  was  full,  floor  and  galleries."  ^ 
About  fifty  members  had  been  added  to  the  church  at 
the  spring  communion,  and,  though  there  had  been  some 
dismissions  and  some  deaths,  the  net  loss  consequent 
on  Mr.  Beecher's  death  was  but  three.  I  had  many  old 
friends  in  the  church  and  had  made  some  new  ones.  I 
understood  the  church  and  the  church  understood  me, 

^  Dr.  Henry  M.  Field  in  the  New  York  Evangelist.  The  italics  are  his. 
The  Field  family  was  a  famous  one,  including  Stephen  Johnson  Field,  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States;  David  Dudley  Field,  a  distinguished 
lawyer  of  New  York  and  the  creator  of  its  Code  of  Civil  Procedure;  Cyrus 
W.  Field,  the  projector  and  promoter  of  the  first  submarine  telegraph  cable 
between  the  United  States  and  Europe;  and  Henry  M.  Field,  the  editor  and 
proprietor  of  what  was  in  his  lifetime  probably  the  foremost  Presbyterian 
journal  in  America. 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  S57 

and  the  church  was  the  best  judge  of  whether  I  was 
the  leader  they  needed.    I  gave  my  consent. 

On  Friday  evening,  May  26,  my  name  was  presented 
by  the  committee  to  a  meeting  of  the  church,  and  the 
call  was  extended;  but  not  without  opposition.  The  vote 
was  four  hundred  to  sixty.  It  was  ratified  by  the  society 
without  dissent,  and  on  the  following  Saturday  evening 
it  was  presented  to  me  by  a  committee  of  the  church  and 
society  appointed  for  that  purpose.  It  had  been  made 
unanimous  by  the  church,  but  I  knew  that  the  minority 
represented  a  real  opposition,  including  some  active 
members.  To  decline  the  call  would  be  to  send  the 
church  back  to  renew  its  quest;  to  delay  would  be  to 
keep  the  church  in  a  ferment  until  my  decision  was  ren- 
dered. I  decided  on  a  very  unconventional  course,  and 
announced  from  the  pulpit  my  acceptance  of  the  call  on 
the  Sunday  morning  after  it  was  received.  In  this  in- 
formal acceptance  I  said  frankly  to  the  congregation: — 

I  am  not  at  all  surprised  that  some  of  the  members  of  this 
church  thought  it  not  wise  to  extend  such  a  call.  I  am,  on  the 
contrary,  quite  surprised  that  any  one  differed  from  them. 
In  their  judgment  that  I  have  no  power  to  fill  this  church  or 
do  its  work  they  are  quite  right.  I  am  no  wind  from  heaven 
that  can  fill  the  sails  that  flap  idly  at  the  mast  of  a  church  whose 
crew  are  aU  passengers;  but  that  is  not  Plymouth  Church. 
I  have  found  you  through  this  last  winter  workers,  every  one 
of  you  cordial  and  hearty  in  his  work.  I  am  sure  you  will 
still  be  so. 

My  confidence  was  not  misplaced.  At  the  close  of  the 
service  one  gentleman  who  had  spoken  strongly  in  the 
Friday  night  meeting  against  the  call  came  up  to  pledge 
me  his  hearty  cooperation,  and  loyally  did  he  fulfill  his 
pledge.  No  minister  could  ask  for  a  more  loyal  and 
united  support  than  was  given  to  me  during  my  entire 


358  REMINISCENCES 

pastorate.  Mrs.  Beecher  was  at  first  opposed  to  the 
call.  She  could  neither  endure  to  see  her  husband's 
work  stop  nor  to  see  any  one  else  standing  in  her  hus- 
band's place  and  receiving  the  support  which  had  been 
so  loyally  given  to  her  husband.  My  wife's  devotion  to 
me  enabled  her  to  understand  this  illogical  but  wholly 
natural  feeling;  by  her  sympathetic  understanding  she 
conquered  it,  and  before  the  year  was  out  Mrs.  Beecher 
was  numbered  among  our  warmest  friends.  For  a  few 
weeks  some  opposition  found  expression  in  anonymous 
articles  in  the  daily  press.  A  few  weeks  after  my  ac- 
ceptance it  was  reported  in  some  detail  that  the  oppo- 
sition in  the  church  was  such  that  I  was  about  to  resign. 
How  far  these  reports  were  fed  by  gossip  in  the  con- 
gregation, how  far  provided  by  inventive  scandalmon- 
gers without,  I  never  knew  and  never  cared  to  inquire. 
The  originality  and  fidelity  of  Mr.  Beecher's  preaching 
had  always  excited  hostility  to  the  church  in  certain 
elements  in  the  community;  that  they  would  be  quick 
to  take  advantage  of  this  critical  period  in  its  history 
was  to  be  expected.  My  wife  and  I  pursued  the  same 
policy  which  we  had  pursued  under  similar  circum- 
stances in  Terre  Haute.  We  said  nothing,  made  no 
replies  to  false  reports,  and  read  and  heard  as  little  as 
possible.  Only  once  did  I  make  any  public  reference  to 
them.  It  was  reported  in  several  newspapers  that  the 
church  was  in  financial  difficulties,  and  that  nevertheless 
I  demanded  a  salary  of  ten  thousand  dollars,  which  the 
trustees  were  unable  to  pay;  and  so  responsible  a 
journal  as  the  "Watchman,"  of  Boston,  doubled  this 
demand  and  made  it  twenty  thousand  dollars.  When 
these  reports  found  a  place  in  reputable  journals,  I 
thought  the  congregation  was  entitled  to  know  the 
facts,  and  that  the  Sunday  morning  service  afforded  a 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  359 

good  opportunity  to  give  them  the  information.  As 
this  statement  embodies  the  principle  upon  which  I 
have  acted  in  all  my  relations  with  churches  throughout 
my  life,  I  repeat  it  here:  — 

The  statement  has  been  made  in  the  "Evening  Post"  that 
I  demanded  a  salary  of  ten  thousand  dollars.  I  wish  to  say 
that  neither  have  I,  nor  has  any  one  else  for  me,  made  any  call 
on  the  trustees  or  on  any  member  of  the  church  for  any  ad- 
justment of  my  salary  or  its  amount.  When  I  try  to  render  serv- 
ice for  any  organization  making  money,  I  try  to  make  a  bar- 
gain; but  a  church  is  not  a  money-making  concern,  and  I  have 
never  made  a  bargain  with  any  church  for  any  service  or  ser- 
mon, and  have  not  done  so  here.  I  have  not  said  to  any  one 
what  salary  I  ought  to  have,  and  I  leave  it  wholly  to 
Plymouth  Church. 

The  next  day  the  "Evening  Post"  responded  to  this 
statement  by  a  very  frank  apology  for  the  misrepresenta- 
tion to  which  it  had  unwittingly  given  circulation,  and 
I  think  this  apology  had  even  more  influence  than  my 
statement  in  putting  an  end  to  the  circulation  of  the 
false  report. 

I  accepted  the  call  on  the  28th  day  of  May.  The 
salary  was  not  fixed  until  October.  It  was  then  made 
eight  thousand  dollars  a  year,  a  sum  sufl5cient  for 
personal  and  pastoral  expenses,  but  not  sufficient  to 
leave  any  annual  margin  for  investment.  Ministers* 
salaries  rarely  are  adequate  to  furnish  any  such  margin. 

When  the  call  to  Plymouth  Church  came  to  me,  I 
was  in  my  fifty-third  year.  The  following  pen-and-ink 
portrait  from  a  kindly  but  not  indiscriminating  article 
in  the  Boston  "Advertiser"  will  give  the  reader  a  notion 
of  the  impression  which  in  public  speaking  I  produced  on 
a  not  unsympathetic  auditor:  — 

In  all  external  ways  the  contrast  [with  INIr.  Beecher]  will  be 
as  striking  as  could  be  imagined.    Lyman  Abbott  is  physically 


J 


S60  REMINISCENCES 

the  antithesis  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher.  Rather  under  the 
middle  height,  spare  in  flesh,  gentle  in  voice,  with  but  little 
gesticulation,  somewhat  pale  in  features,  calm,  introspective 
and  almost  mystical,  he  seems  while  speaking  to  look  through 
the  windows  of  the  soul  of  things  not  seen  with  mortal  vision 
rather  than  into  the  human  eyes  that  look  up  into  his.  Though 
totally  lacking  in  that  gift  of  well-nigh  magical  eloquence 
which  for  forty  years  astonished  and  thrilled  and  held  spell- 
bound the  packed  thousands  in  that  Brooklyn  meeting-house, 
though  having  none  of  that  personal  magnetism,  that  intui- 
tive knowledge  of  human  nature,  that  all-creative  imagination, 
which  made  their  former  pastor  the  pulpit  phenomenon  of  his 
time,  it  may  be  found  that  he  upon  whom  that  prophet's 
mantle  has  fallen  is  destined  to  do  a  work  as  great  and  exert 
an  influence  no  less  widespread  and  abiding. 

When  a  church  has  been  for  forty  years  under  one 
pastor,  universally  beloved  by  his  people,  and  a  suc- 
cessor comes  to  take  his  place,  if  he  is  eflBcient,  he  will 
bring  with  him  some  new  ideals  and  some  new  methods; 
if  he  is  wise,  he  will  introduce  these  ideals  and  these 
methods  very  cautiously.  Churches,  like  individuals,  are 
creatures  of  habit,  and  a  habit  which  has  lasted  through 
a  generation  is  not  easily  changed. 

The  organization  of  Plymouth  Church  was  very 
simple.  The  society,  consisting  of  all  who  contributed  to 
the  support  of  the  church,  elected  a  board  of  trustees, 
who  owned  and  administered  all  the  property.  The 
church  elected  a  board  of  deacons,  who  were  the  pas- 
tor's official  advisers,  administered  the  church  charities, 
and  took  charge  of  the  religious  services  in  the  pastor's 
absence.  A  membership  committee  examined  all  ap- 
plicants for  admission  to  the  church,  whether  by  pro- 
fession or  by  letter  from  other  churches.  All  the  business 
of  the  church  was  conducted  in  public  business  meetings, 
which  might,  however,  refer  the  matter  under  discus- 
sion to  a  special  committee. 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  361 

I  never  attempted  to  interfere  with  the  work  of  the 
board  of  trustees,  but  one  interesting  incident  occurred 
to  mark  clearly  the  division  between  the  functions  of 
that  board  and  those  of  the  pastor  of  the  church.  The 
Sunday  after  the  first  election  of  President  McKinley, 
in  1896,  when  I  went  to  church  I  found  the  American 
flag  flying  from  its  front  window.  I  was  sorry  to  see  any- 
thing which  seemed  to  identify  the  church  with  a  politi- 
cal party,  though  I  personally  was  strongly  opposed  to 
the  free  silver  policy  of  Mr.  Bryan  and  very  glad  of  its 
defeat.  One  of  the  young  men  of  the  church,  who  prob- 
ably sympathized  with  me,  asked  me  before  the  service 
if  I  wished  the  flag  to  remain.  I  could  not  learn  from 
him,  nor  from  any  one,  by  whose  order  it  had  been  put 
up,  and  therefore  directed  it  taken  down.  The  next 
day  I  received  a  letter  from  one  of  the  trustees  calling 
me  somewhat  sharply  to  account  for  this  action.  The 
board  of  trustees,  he  said,  had  the  entire  control  of  the 
church  property,  and  the  minister  had  no  authority  to 
interfere.  I  wrote  him  in  reply  that  I  recognized  that 
principle,  and  never  intended  to  disregard  it.  But  it  did 
not  entitle  the  board  to  put  up  symbols  in  or  on  the 
church  to  indicate  doctrines  for  which  they  wished  the 
church  to  stand;  to  put  up,  for  example,  a  crucifix  or 
a  statue  of  the  Virgin  Mary.  If  he  thought  differently, 
I  would  join  with  him  in  calling  a  meeting  of  the  church 
and  congregation  to  submit  the  question  to  them  for 
decision.  To  this  letter  I  received  no  reply,  and  con- 
cluded that  either  he  agreed  with  me  or  else  did  not 
think  the  question  sufficiently  important  for  public 
debate.  The  incident  is  insignificant  in  itself,  and  is 
recorded  here  simply  from  the  importance  of  the  prin- 
ciple involved. 

Neither  did  I  attempt  to  interfere  with  the  charitable 


362  REMINISCENCES 

work  of  the  board  of  deacons,  but  it  has  never  seemed  to 
me  that  a  church  fulfills  its  whole  charitable  duty  be- 
cause it  takes  care  of  its  own  poor.  Plymouth  Church 
was  on  the  edge  of  one  of  the  poorest  districts  in  Brook- 
lyn. To  fulfill  our  Christian  duty  toward  the  popula- 
tion which  resided  in  this  our  neighborhood  a  commit- 
tee of  ladies  was  formed  and  placed  under  the  special 
charge  of  a  notably  eflicient  woman  of  the  church. 
The  Brooklyn  Bureau  of  Charities  was  notified  that 
Plymouth  Church  would  care  for  all  cases  of  destitution 
within  that  district  and  would  report  its  work  statedly 
to  the  Bureau.  From  market-men  in  the  vicinity  food 
was  obtained  at  cost  prices  and  some  donations  of  food 
were  secured.  A  little  money  was  raised  by  private 
subscription.  The  special  committee  constituted  itself 
a  board  of  visitors,  and  not  only  took  charge  of  all 
cases  referred  to  it,  but  also  of  all  cases  discovered  by  its 
own  investigations.  Each  family  so  discovered  was  as- 
signed to  a  special  friendly  visitor,  who  ascertained  its 
needs,  the  cause  of  its  distress,  and  possible  remedies; 
sought  employment  for  the  unemployed;  attempted  to 
persuade  —  and  often  did  persuade  —  the  discouraged 
man  to  give  up  his  drink;  clothed  the  children  and  en- 
abled them  to  go  to  school;  aided  the  mother  to  spend 
her  income  economically  and  to  use  efficiently  what  she 
bought;  and,  what  was  most  important  of  all,  carried 
the  cheer  of  hope  and  good  companionship  into  homes 
darkened  by  discouragement  and  despair.  This  work 
was  kept  up  throughout  my  pastorate  so  efficiently  that 
I  do  not  think  that  any  family  in  need  in  a  district  of 
considerable  size  was  neglected,  and  yet  only  in  one  year 
was  over  one  hundred  dollars  spent  by  the  committee  in 
cash. 

"Blessed,"  says  the  Psalmist,  "is  he  that  considereth 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  363 

the  poor.'*  The  American  poor  are  not  beggars.  Real, 
spontaneous,  friendly  consideration  is  far  more  valuable 
and  far  more  welcome  than  are  unconsidered  gifts  of 
food,  clothing,  or  money,  whether  given  by  individual 
impulse  or  by  cold-blooded,  official  charity.  I  believe 
that  if  the  plan  pursued  by  Plymouth  Church  could  be 
carried  into  effect  by  all  the  churches  in  our  great  cities 
cooperating  in  selected  or  assigned  districts,  under  the 
general  supervision  of  a  central  organization,  the  bene- 
fits both  to  the  poor  and  to  the  cooperating  churches 
would  be  inestimable. 

Some  modification  was  quietly  made  in  the  methods 
pursued  by  the  membership  committee  in  ascertaining 
the  qualifications  of  candidates  for  admission  to  the 
church.  It  was  assumed  that  Plymouth  Church  was  a 
church  of  workers;  a  list  of  the  varied  activities  of  the 
church  was  given  to  every  candidate  for  admission,  and 
he  was  asked  whether  he  could  take  any  active  part  in 
the  work  of  the  church,  and,  if  so,  to  what  part  he  de- 
sired to  be  assigned.  The  effect  of  this  change  in  the 
methods  of  examination,  quietly  introduced,  was  wholly 
beneficial,  and  did  something,  I  think,  to  develop  in  all 
the  members  a  sense  of  personal  responsibility  for  the 
life  and  work  of  the  church.  While  I  was  still  acting 
temporarily  as  pulpit  supply  a  committee  was  created  to 
supervise  the  work  of  the  church  and  an  envelope  plan 
was  put  in  operation  to  raise  the  necessary  funds.  By 
this  method  an  average  of  from  ten  to  twelve  thousand 
dollars  a  year  was  secured  during  my  pastorate  and 
the  work  was  materially  enlarged.  Besides  the  ordi- 
nary activities  of  churches  at  that  time  we  maintained 
in  connection  with  our  branches  reading-rooms,  penny 
provident  banks,  boys'  clubs,  two  gymnasiums,  one  of 
them  fairly   well  equipped,   lodging-house   visitations. 


y 


364  REMINISCENCES 

organized  aid  to  unemployed,  and  work  among  the 
sailors  on  the  docks  and  on  ships  in  port.  The  second 
annual  report  of  this  church  work  committee  embodied 
reports  from  ten  working  organizations  in  addition  to 
the  three  Sunday-Schools  and  some  auxiliary  organ- 
izations. None  of  these  were  mere  paper  organiza- 
tions; all  were  active  in  practical  work.  The  statement 
of  the  Brooklyn  "Eagle"  that  Plymouth  Church  was  a 
"beehive  of  systematic  Christian  effort"  was  not  an 
exaggeration.  At  the  time  of  my  resignation  in  1898 
Dr.  Rossiter  W.  Raymond,  whose  activity  in  the  work 
of  the  church  gave  him  special  opportunity  for  knowl- 
edge, wrote  in  a  paper  published  in  the  New  York 
"Tribune":  — 

Of  the  present  large  membership  of  Plymouth  Church  I 
think  it  may  be  said  that  practically  every  able-bodied  person 
is  busy  in  Christian  work  somehow  —  mostly  in  some  one  of 
the  multiplied  activities  of  the  church,  but  sometimes  in  gen- 
eral religious  and  charitable  enterprises  outside,  many  of  the 
officers  and  directors  of  which  are  from  Plymouth  Church. 

Following  my  acceptance  of  the  call  to  Plymouth 
Church,  the  Reverend  S.  B.  Halliday,  who  had  been 
Mr.  Beecher's  assistant,  resigned  to  accept  a  call  to  a 
newly  organized  church  in  the  outskirts  of  Brooklyn 
which  took  the  name  of  "The  Henry  Ward  Beecher 
Memorial  Church,"  and  here  he  carried  on  a  successful 
pastorate  for  a  number  of  years.  In  his  place  I  desired, 
not  an  assistant,  but  an  associate  who  should  share  with 
me  in  the  responsibilities  of  the  pastorate.  My  first 
choice  —  and  I  had  no  second  —  was  Howard  S.  Bliss, 
who  had  been  with  one  of  my  sons  in  Amherst  College, 
had  earned  by  his  work  in  Union  Theological  Seminary 
a  traveling  scholarship,  and  was  now  abroad  pursuing 
post-graduate  studies.  He  was  wisely  unwilling  to  forego 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  365 

this  opportunity,  but  expressed  himself  glad  to  join  with 
me  in  the  work  of  Plymouth  Church  when  his  European 
studies  were  completed,  and  I  waited  for  him  until  the 
fall  of  1889,  having  secured  meanwhile  a  temporary 
assistant.  We  were  installed  together,  I  as  pastor,  he 
as  associate  pastor,  by  a  Congregational  Council  on 
January  16,  1890.  There  were  two  features  in  this 
Council  which  made  it  unique  in  Congregational  annals, 
and  attracted  to  it  a  considerable  attention  not  only 
from  the  religious  but  also  from  the  secular  press.  One 
peculiarity  was  its  constitution.  It  included  not  only 
delegates  from  a  score  of  Congregational  churches,  but 
representative  men  from  five  other  Protestant  denomina- 
tions —  the  Episcopal,  the  Baptist,  the  Presbyterian,  the 
Reformed,  and  the  Methodist.  Thus  the  Council 
might  properly  be  called  a  Christian  Union  Council. 
By  its  act  it  emphasized  the  truth  that  underlying  the 
various  Protestant  denominations  is  a  common  spiritual 
faith  more  elemental  and  more  fundamental  than  the 
peculiar  tenets  of  any  denomination,  and  thus  a  quarter 
of  a  century  ago  indicated  that  spiritual  unity  of  the 
Protestant  churches  for  which  they  are  now  seeking  some 
definite  and  ofiicial  expression,  either  by  organic  union 
or  by  federation.  It  was  a  peculiar  delight  to  me 
to  have  as  a  representative  in  this  Council  one  whom 
I  loved  as  a  personal  friend  and  revered  as  the  most 
prophetic  living  preacher  in  America  —  Phillips  Brooks. 
And  I  think  it  was  of  more  concern  to  me  than  it  was  to 
him  that  afterwards  when  he  was  nominated  to  be  the 
Bishop  of  Massachusetts  some  High  Churchmen  of  the 
narrow  type  bitterly  opposed  his  election  because  he 
had  taken  this  part  in  the  installation  of  two  non-epis- 
copally  ordained  clergymen.  The  other  peculiarity  of 
the  Council  was  that  it  installed  two  pastors  at  the 


366  REMINISCENCES 

same  time.  "In  your  churches,  as  I  understand  it,"  said 
Dr.  E.  Winchester  Donald,  rector  of  the  Church  of  the 
Ascension,  of  New  York  City,  "there  is  no  such  office 
as  assistant  minister,  and  Mr.  Bliss  has  come  to  create 
and  not  to  succeed  to  the  functions;  and  we,  who  wish 
you  well,  shall  watch  with  very  greatest  interest  whether 
it  is  possible  for  you  to  graft  upon  your  system  an  as- 
sistant ministership,  by  which  the  pastor  of  this  church 
shall  have  some  one  who  is  working  with  him  along  the 
same  lines  and  is  regarded,  not  as  second  pastor,  but  as 
his  peer  as  a  Christian  minister."  This  interpretation  I 
indorsed  in  the  closing  speech  of  the  installation  exer- 
cises, in  which  I  said:  "I  welcome  Mr.  Howard  S.  Bliss 
to  a  cordial  and  united  work  in  which  there  shall  be 
neither  superiority  nor  inferiority,  but  a  common  fellow- 
ship in  the  pastorate  of  this  church  and  in  the  work  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

A  little  later  I  carried  out  a  suggestion  of  my  brother 
Austin.  When  a  medical  student  graduates  from  his 
medical  school,  he  is  eager  to  get  a  position  in  ahospital, 
where  he  is  glad  to  serve  without  pay  for  the  practical 
experience  which  such  service  will  give  him.  I  published 
in  the  Congregational  journals,  and  also  in  the  "  Christian 
Union,"  a  card  inviting  any  young  man  to  correspond 
with  me  who  in  similar  fashion  wished  some  practical 
experience  in  order  to  equip  him  for  his  life-work  in 
the  ministry  and  who  would  neither  be  paid  for  his  serv- 
ice nor  pay  for  his  instruction.  As  the  result  of  this  card 
two  helpers  offered  their  services.  One  of  them,  Horace 
Porter,  subsequently  became  the  assistant  pastor  of 
Plymouth  Church,  and  is  now  pastor  of  one  of  the  most 
prosperous  Congregational  churches  in  southern  Cali- 
fornia. 

The  statement  in  the  press  that  Mr.  Bliss  was  coming 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  367 

to  be  my  associate  brought  from  the  Brooklyn  "Citizen" 
the  naive  inquiry,  "Of  what  possible  use  is  an  associate 
pastor?"  In  fact,  except  for  the  first  year,  when  I  was 
getting  myself  familiar  with  conditions,  I  always  had  two 
assistants,  generally  three,  and  part  of  the  time  four, 
who  gave  their  whole  time  to  the  work  of  the  church.  I 
could  not  possibly  have  carried  on  that  work  without 
their  cooperation.  One  year  there  were  in  the  church 
and  its  branches  over  one  hundred  funerals,  and  each 
funeral  meant  not  only  a  service  to  be  attended  but  a 
family  to  be  visited  both  during  the  fatal  illness  and 
after  the  end  had  come.  Ideally,  any  church  as  large 
as  Plymouth  and  organized  for  work  should  have  at 
least  three  pastors:  one  to  furnish  instruction  and  in- 
spiration for  the  workers  —  and  he  should  have  time  to 
study  current  problems  so  that  he  may  keep  in  advance 
of  the  congregation  in  the  thought  of  his  time;  one  to 
carry  on  in  office  hours  and  in  house-to-house  visitation 
the  kind  of  personal  work  which  the  wise  Roman 
Catholic  Church  carries  on  through  the  confessional; 
and  one  to  supervise  and  direct  the  activities  of  the 
church  in  its  various  departments.  In  Plymouth 
Church  I  devoted  myself  to  the  work  of  preacher  and 
teacher.  But  I  had  with  considerable  regularity  weekly 
conferences  with  my  assistants  and  generally  daily 
conferences  with  my  associate,  Mr.  Bliss,  and  his  suc- 
cessors. And  they  were  always  welcome  to  bring  to  me 
for  my  advice  details  of  their  work,  which  was  also  mine. 
Again,  for  the  Sabbath  evening  services  I  had  a  sugges- 
tion from  my  wise  brother  Austin,  who  said  to  me  that 
few  laymen  cared  to  listen  to  two  exhortations  to  virtue 
in  one  day,  but  that  a  good  many  of  them  would  gladly 
avail  themselves  of  an  opportunity  on  Sunday  evening 
to    listen  to  a  series  of  lectures  which  would  give  them 


368  REMINISCENCES 

inspiration  and  instruction  on  social  and  moral  questions. 
Acting  upon  this  suggestion,  I  followed  a  course  of  Sab- 
bath evening  lectures  on  the  life  of  Christ  with  other 
courses  on  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  upon  social  ques- 
tions, on  the  changes  in  theology  made  necessary  by  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  on  the  modern  view  of  the  Old 
Testament,  and  on  the  life  and  teachings  of  Paul.  These 
lectures  were  taken  down  in  shorthand,  and  from  them, 
from  other  material  gathered  in  their  preparation,  and 
from  sporadic  articles  on  these  subjects  in  "The  Out- 
look" and  elsewhere  I  prepared  the  series  of  volumes 
published  by  Houghton  Mifflin  Company  on  "Chris- 
tianity and  Social  Problems,"  "The  Evolution  of  Chris- 
tianity," "The  Theology  of  an  Evolutionist,"  "The  Life 
and  Literature  of  the  Ancient  Hebrews,"  and  "The  Life 
and  Letters  of  Paul."  Two  of  these  series  I  also  gave  by 
request  before  the  Lowell  Institute  of  Boston. 

An  incident  growing  out  of  the  series  of  lectures  on 
the  Bible  furnishes  an  amusing  illustration  of  the  kind 
of  misreports  to  which  a  public  speaker  is  sometimes  sub- 
jected by  the  American  press.  In  my  lecture  on  the  book 
of  Jonah  I  told  the  congregation  that  some  scholars  re- 
garded it  as  history,  some  as  a  myth,  some  as  an  an- 
cient legend,  and  some  as  a  satire  on  the  narrowness  of 
the  Hebrew  people,  and  that  one  ingenious  critic  had 
compared  it  to  the  "Biglow  Papers."  A  newspaper 
reporter,  who  probably  had  never  heard  of  the  "Biglow 
Papers,"  reported  me  as  saying  that  the  book  of  Jonah 
was  the  "Pickwick  Papers"  of  the  Bible,  and  that  re- 
port was  taken  up  and  repeated  by  the  press  all  over 
the  country.  I  do  not  know  how  many  letters  I  received 
rebuking  me  for  my  irreverence.  To  the  letters  I  re- 
plied; but,  pursuing  my  habitual  policy  of  silence,  I 
sent  no  public  correction  to  the  newspapers.    This  in- 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  369 

cident,  followed  by  a  resolution  passed  by  a  meeting  of 
some  Congregational  ministers  in  Brooklyn,  disavowing 
all  responsibility  for  my  views  on  the  Bible,  gave  to  these 
lectures  a  prominence  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  real 
importance.  Each  evening  at  the  close  of  the  address  as 
many  hearers  adjourned  to  the  lecture-room  as  could  be 
admitted,  and  there  for  half  an  hour  I  answered  any  ques- 
tions on  the  subject  of  the  lecture  which  members  of  the 
congregation  might  desire  to  put  to  me,  an  exercise  for 
which  good  previous  practice  in  Chautauqua  assemblies 
had  prepared  me.  The  church  was  crowded  every  even- 
ing by  attendants  from  all  over  Brooklyn,  and  some 
were  turned  away  from  the  doors;  the  lectures  were  pub- 
lished in  full  by  the  Brooklyn  "Eagle"  and  republished  in 
pamphlet  form  by  an  interested  listener,  accompanied 
with  suggested  Bible  readings  for  every  day  in  the 
week;  and  fragmentary  reports  were  published  in  the 
newspapers  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  I  have  three 
scrap-books  filled  with  newspaper  accounts  of  these 
lectures  on  the  Bible  and  comments  on  them.  And 
yet  what  I  said  at  the  time  in  connection  with  them 
was  Hterally  true:  "I  am  not  to  be  credited  with 
saying  anything  original  in  these  Sunday  evening  lec- 
tures. What  I  am  saying  to  you  may  be  found  in  the 
literature  on  this  subject  on  the  shelves  of  all  well- 
equipped  clergymen."  If  I  have  ever  obtained  any 
reputation  for  originality,  it  is  largely  because  I  have 
always  assumed  that  the  laity  are  as  intelligent  as  the  , 

clergy;  that  whatever  it  is  safe  for  a  theological  scholar  J 
to  know  it  is  safe  for  his  congregation  to  know;  that  all 
knowledge  is  safe  and  all  error  is  dangerous,  and  there- 
fore, while  I  have  not  proclaimed  my  doubts  and  diffi- 
culties, I  have  unhesitatingly  and  frankly  avowed  my 
conclusions,  never  asking.  Is  this  safe?  but  only,  Is  this 


S70  REMINISCENCES 

true?  though  always,  of  course,  endeavoring  to  express 
my  faith  in  a  form  that  would  not  be  obnoxious  to  those 
who  dissented  from  it.  During  these  courses  of  Sunday 
evening  lectures  I  received  many  hundreds  of  letters  — 
I  think  it  would  be  safe  to  say  two  or  three  thousand. 
Some  score  of  them  rebuked  me  for  disturbing  the  faith 
of  others;  some  asked  questions  to  aid  the  writers  in 
further  study  of  the  subjects  discussed;  but  the  great 
majority  thanked  me  for  aid  furnished  in  strengthening 
a  weakened  faith  or  in  recovering  a  faith  that  had  been 
lost;  and  only  one  intimated  that  I  had  weakened  the 
faith  of  the  writer.  To  the  complaints  of  my  critics  I 
found  sufficient  answer  in  the  fact  that  at  the  spring 
communion,  of  the  sixty-five  who  united  with  the 
church,  forty-one  on  confession  of  their  faith,  a  large 
proportion  attributed  their  decision  in  part  to  the  in- 
fluence of  these  Sunday  evening  lectures. 

In  my  morning  sermons  I  rarely  discussed  political 
or  sociological  topics.  The  first  winter  I  was  for  a  while 
called  up  every  Sunday  morning  on  the  telephone  by 
a  New  York  paper  with  the  question:  "Did  Dr.  Abbott 
preach  on  anything  particular  this  morning.''"  My  chil- 
dren always  answered  the  telephone;  and,  as  they  always 
cheerfully  replied,  "Nothing  particular,"  after  a  few 
months  the  telephone  calls  ceased. 

I  believe  that  if  a  pastor  desires  his  church  to  be  a 
working  church  his  first  aim  must  be  to  inspire  it  with  a 
spiritual  ambition.  My  sermons  were  therefore  spirit- 
ual rather  than  theological  or  merely  ethical.  If  the 
reader  asks  what  I  mean  by  saying  that  they  were 
spiritual,  I  reply:  Their  object  was  to  inspire  directly 
the  conscience,  the  reverence,  the  faith,  the  hope,  the 
love,  of  the  hearers.  The  morning  congregations  steadily 
increased  in  numbers  until  by  the  second  year  the  church 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  371 

was  always  full,  and  many  of  the  aisle  seats  were  oc- 
cupied. There  were  rarely  any  vacant  pews,  though 
usually  some  vacant  seats. 

Occasionally  I  took  up  public  questions  in  the  pulpit, 
but  when  I  did  so  it  was  generally  either  that  I  might 
interpret  the  convictions  of  the  church  to  the  community 
or  that  I  might  induce  the  church  to  take  action  that 
would  express  its  conviction. 

One  brief  and  successful  campaign  many  serve  to  il- 
lustrate the  method.  When  a  new  and  enlarged  entrance 
to  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  was  completed,  an  application 
was  made  to  the  Commissioners  of  Brooklyn  for  a  li- 
cense for  a  liquor  shop  at  the  entrance  of  the  Bridge 
by  an  applicant  described  by  the  Brooklyn  "Eagle" 
as  "one  of  the  most  estimable  men  in  Brooklyn,"  iden- 
tified with  many  of  the  largest  corporations  in  the  city, 
the  president  of  a  railway  company,  and  the  owner  of 
the  entire  front  of  the  block  in  which  the  saloon  was  to 
be  placed.  He  offered  to  forfeit  five  thousand  dollars 
if  in  his  saloon  liquor  was  sold  to  a  minor,  a  woman,  or 
an  intoxicated  man.  But  there  were  already  thirty-six 
saloons  within  two  blocks  of  the  Bridge  entrance,  and 
I  thought  that  enough  to  provide  for  all  reasonable 
thirst.  My  assistant,  Mr.  Porter,  ascertained  the  facts 
in  detail  and  brought  them  to  me,  and  in  a  Sunday 
morning  sermon  I  brought  them  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
church.  At  the  close  of  the  service  a  protest  against 
granting  the  license  was  laid  on  the  table  in  front  of  the 
pulpit  and  over  five  hundred  signatures  from  the  men  of 
the  congregation  were  attached  to  it.  A  committee  of 
the  church  was  appointed  to  act  on  its  behalf.  I  ob- 
tained from  my  brother  Austin  a  brief,  showing  clearly 
that,  under  the  law  and  the  decisions  of  the  courts,  no 
man  had  a  right  to  a  license;  that  the  Excise  Commis- 


S72  REMINISCENCES 

sioners  were  to  grant  the  license  only  in  case  they 
deemed  the  interests  and  desires  of  the  community  re- 
quired it.  The  committee  invited  Mr.  Edward  M. 
Shepard,  a  well-known  lawyer  and  later  politically 
prominent  as  a  Reform  Democrat,  to  act  as  counsel 
for  the  protestants.  He  accepted  the  invitation,  ex- 
amined the  witnesses  whom  IVIr.  Porter  had  gathered, 
presented  the  case  of  the  protestants,  which  Mr.  Porter 
had  prepared  for  him,  and  won.  The  license  was  refused, 
and  the  saloon  was  not  opened  until  the  Legislature  at 
Albany  abolished  the  Hcense  system  altogether  and 
enacted  the  Raines  Law,  under  which  any  man  might  open 
a  saloon  anywhere  on  paying  his  State  tax.  I  may  add 
that  in  my  judgment  this  opposition  was  the  more  effec- 
tive because  it  was  unaccompanied  with  any  abuse  of 
saloon-keepers  in  general  or  the  applicant  for  this  license 
in  particular.  In  these  and  similar  cases  my  ideal  was 
not  merely  by  individual  protest  to  reach  my  congrega- 
tion from  the  pulpit,  and  incidentally  the  public  through 
the  press;  it  was  even  more  to  induce  the  church  to  take 
action  against  public  wrong  and  in  support  of  public 
righteousness.  This  I  thought  to  be  a  legitimate  part 
of  the  work  of  a  church,  and  very  effectively  did  Plym- 
outh Church  respond  to  my  appeals.  I  may  add 
that,  by  Mr.  Porter's  persistent  and  continuous  work 
for  two  years,  fourteen  licenses  were  canceled  and 
several  saloons  were  closed. 

Although  in  following  Mr.  Beecher  I  had  entered 
upon  a  very  difficult  undertaking,  it  was  one  in  which 
I  had  some  special  advantages.  A  pupil  of  Mr.  Beecher, 
I  shared  with  the  church  its  deep  affection  for  him.  The 
church  was  perhaps  too  self-conscious  of  its  past  great 
history;  but  it  did  not  live  in  the  past.  It  was  ready 
to  meet  the  unknown  future  with  courage  and  hope  and 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  S73 

to  follow  its  new  leader  with  unabated  loyalty;  it  be- 
lieved in  a  free  pulpit;  and,  though  I  knew  that  on  some 
important  questions  leading  members  of  the  church  did 
not  agree  with  me,  not  once  in  my  eleven  years'  pastorate 
was  any  attempt  made  to  limit  the  liberty  of  my  utter- 
ances. I  met  on  the  Sabbath  day  an  expectant  con- 
gregation. The  people  had  been  accustomed  to  come  to 
Plymouth  Church  not  from  a  sense  of  duty  to  support 
the  service  but  inspired  by  a  desire  to  find  in  the 
service  a  support  for  their  lives.  What  inspiration 
such  expectancy  furnishes  will  be  readily  understood 
by  every  public  speaker.  Above  all,  the  church  was  in- 
spired by  Christlike  ideals  and  met  difficult  issues  with  a 
Christlike  spirit.  What  I  mean  by  this  is  best  illustrated 
by  the  action  of  the  church  in  one  case  which  attracted 
no  little  public  attention  at  the  time. 

One  of  the  members,  at  one  time  quite  active  in  Chris- 
tian work,  was  discovered  to  have  been  for  several  years 
committing  a  series  of  forgeries.  Upon  his  arrest  he 
pleaded  guilty,  gave  to  the  District  Attorney  every 
facility  for  the  prosecution,  which  was  for  some  legal 
reason  necessary  notwithstanding  his  plea  of  guilty, 
turned  over  all  his  property  to  the  authorities  for  the 
benefit  of  his  victims,  made  no  effort  and  desired  none 
made  for  him  by  his  influential  friends  for  a  minimum 
sentence,  and  wrote  a  letter  to  the  church  of  frank  con- 
fession and  repentance,  leaving  the  church  to  take  such 
action  as  it  deemed  right  respecting  its  recreant  mem- 
ber. He  was  convicted  and  sent  to  State's  prison.  The 
action  of  the  church  was  embodied  in  the  following 
resolution,  adopted  unanimously  after  a  full  statement 
of  the  facts :  — 

Resolved :  That  this  church,  fully  recognizing  the  sin  of 


in  the  acts  for  which  he  is  now  suffering  the  legal  penalty,  re- 


874  REMINISCENCES 

tain  his  name  upon  the  rolls,  in  the  faith  that  no  man  more 
needs  the  watch  and  care  of  a  Christian  church  than  one  who 
has  fallen  into  sin,  but  has  sincerely  repented  of  his  sin  and 
desires  to  return  to  the  way  of  righteousness  and  life.  Our 
message  to  our  brother  is,  that  God  pardoneth  and  absolveth 
all  those  that  truly  repent  and  unfeignedly  believe  his  Holy 
Gospel,  and  we  commend  him  to  the  prayers  of  the  members 
of  our  church  and  to  such  special  offices  of  spiritual  aid  as  it 
may  be  possible  for  the  pastors  or  other  officers  of  this  church 
to  render  to  him. 

During  the  remainder  of  my  pastorate  Plymouth 
Church  had  a  member  in  good  and  regular  standing  in 
Sing  Sing  Prison  whom  one  of  its  pastors  visited  every 
year  in  token  of  the  church's  fellowship.^  Of  course  this 
action  subjected  the  church  to  some  bitter  and  some  not 
very  intelligent  criticism;  but  the  prevailing  comment  of 
the  press,  both  secular  and  religious,  was  in  the  spirit 
of  the  New  York  "Tribune,"  which  said:  "In  adopting 
this  resolution  Plymouth  Church  has,  in  our  opinion, 
done  exactly  what  the  Founder  of  Christianity  would 
have  done  under  the  same  circumstances.  Christ  came 
not  to  call  the  righteous  but  sinners  to  repentance,  and 
*him  that  cometh  to  me,'  he  once  declared,  'I  will  in 
no  wise  cast  out.'"  And  it  quoted  with  approval  from 
the  sermon  which  I  preached  the  Sunday  following  this 
action  of  the  church:  — 

If  you  violate  the  law  of  God  and  you  violate  the  law  of  man, 
come  to  Plymouth  Church's  pastor.  I  will  not  extenuate  or 
palhate  your  sin.  If  it  is  drunkenness,  I  will  not  call  it  jollity 
or  freshness  or  wild  oats  or  any  such  thing.  I  will  call  it 
drunkenness.  If  it  is  taking  out  of  any  man's  pocket  his 
property  by  any  scheme  or  device  whatsoever,  I  will  not  cover 
it  up  with  phrases,  but  I  will  call  it  what  it  is  —  stealing.    If 

^  Upon  his  discharge  from  prison,  he  was  enabled  by  friends  to  resume 
business  and,  until  his  death  many  years  later,  was  a  useful  and  honored 
citizen. 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  375 

you  want  some  one  to  falsify  and  flatter  and  excuse,  do  not 
come  to  me  or  to  Plymouth  Church.  But  if,  having  in  life's 
battle  fallen  wounded;  if,  in  that  struggle  between  good  and 
evil  which  goes  on  in  every  soul,  evil  has  become  victorious  over 
you;  if  there  is  a  great  remorse  in  your  heart  and  a  great 
shame  for  the  irreparable  past;  if  you  look  out  on  society  and  j 
society  seems  to  point  to  the  disgrace  of  your  hfe;  if  you  say  ,1 
there  is  no  life,  no  hope,  come  to  me,  come  to  Plymouth  Church. 
And  as  God  has  helped  me,  and  given  me  his  grace,  so,  God 
helping  me,  I  will  give  you  my  hand  of  fellowship  and  my 
heart  of  forgiveness  and  my  prayers.  And  Plymouth  Church 
will  do  the  same. 

I  quote  this  paragraph  here  because  in  this  sermon 
I  was  speaking  rather  for  than  to  the  church,  and  believe 
that  it  truly  interpreted  the  spirit  by  which  the  church 
was  actuated. 

During  these  eleven  years  of  Plymouth  pastorate  I 
was  not  merely  an  editorial  contributor  to  "The  Out- 
look." ^  I  was  its  editorial  chief,  directing  its  policy  and 
responsible  for  its  conduct.  The  office  correspondence 
and  the  reading  and  passing  upon  manuscripts  largely 
devolved  upon  others.  But  two  mornings  every  week 
I  spent  at  the  office.  On  Wednesday,  in  editorial  con- 
ference with  my  associates,  we  discussed  the  questions 
to  be  treated  in  the  following  issue,  determined  the  policy 
to  be  adopted,  and  assigned  the  editorials  and  para- 
graphs to  the  different  editors.  The  following  Tuesday 
morning  the  paper  went  to  press.  I  spent  Monday  morn- 
ing at  the  office  writing  last  paragraphs,  dictating  letters, 
reading  proof,  consulting  with  my  associates  on  special 
topics,  and  attending  to  the  innumerable  details  which 
make  up  so  large  a  portion  of  the  editor's  work.  Monday 

^  The  title  was  changed  during  my  pastorate  in  Plymouth  Church  from 
The  Christian  Union  to  The  Outlook,  as  explained  in  the  immediately  preced- 
ing chapter.  To  avoid  confusion  I  shall  generally  refer  to  this  journal  in 
future  chapters  by  its  present  title  —  The  Outlook. 


376     •  REMINISCENCES 

evening  the  editorial  proofs  were  sent  to  me  at  my  house 
and  revised  by  me  to  secure  unity  and  consistency  in 
our  editorial  utterances.  I  never  had  a  blue  Monday. 
Tuesday  morning  I  could  hardly  have  told  either  the 
text  or  the  subject  of  my  previous  Sunday's  sermon. 
Thursday  or  Friday  morning  I  usually  wrote  my  lead- 
ing editorial.  My  correspondence  I  have  for  years  car- 
ried on  by  dictation,  but  my  literary  work  I  have  habit- 
ually done  with  the  pen.  Lord  Bacon  says,  "Reading 
maketh  a  full  man,  conference  a  ready  man,  and  writing 
an  exact  man."  I  would  advise  all  young  ministers  who 
intend  to  preach  extemporaneously  to  do  habitually 
some  careful  work  with  the  pen  in  order  to  form  a 
habit  of  accuracy  in  expression.  The  more  ready  the 
speaker,  the  greater  the  necessity  for  this  pen  exercise. 

In  all  this  double  work  my  wife  was  an  unordained 
co-pastor.  I  initiated  no  new  enterprise  without  first  con- 
sulting with  her.  If  she  studied  the  great  social  and 
religious  problems  less  than  I  did,  she  studied  the  individ- 
ual characters  in  the  congregation  more.  She  was  more 
reluctant  to  reject  the  traditional  than  I,  and  so  enabled 
me  to  see  the  truth  in  tradition  than  otherwise  in  my 
impatience  I  might  have  wholly  rejected.  In  all  the 
work  of  the  church  she  was  more  than  my  alter  ego ;  she 
understood  and  loyally  supported  my  views  even  when 
she  did  not  fully  share  them,  and  we  were  of  one  mind, 
one  spirit.  In  my  absence  from  home  and  in  my  ab- 
sorption in  the  study  my  assistants  brought  their  ques- 
tions to  her,  and  many  a  problem  in  the  church  detail 
was  solved  without  my  knowing  its  existence  until  the 
solution  was  reported  to  me.  After  the  first  winter  we 
rented  a  house  large  enough  to  be  a  parish  house  as  well 
as  a  personal  home,  and  it  was  in  frequent  use  for  various 
gatherings  of  the  church.    Here  were  held  the  monthly 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  S77 

meeting  of  the  church  work  committee  and  occasional 
special  meetings  of  the  deacons  or  the  trustees;  here  was 
given  on  several  occasions  a  fair  for  the  work  of  the 
young  women's  guild;  here,  on  two  occasions,  in  answer 
to  an  invitation  from  the  pulpit  to  professional  teachers 
in  the  congregation,  some  two  hundred  gathered  for  the 
purpose  of  mutual  acquaintance.  At  night  my  wife  read 
to  me  or  I  read  to  her  some  book  selected  to  serve  the 
purpose  of  what  Thackeray  has  called  a  "nightcap," 
and  slept  the  better  for  the  respite  from  our  problems. 
In  our  united  service  she  had  the  same  stimulus  I  had 
—  the  fellowship  of  loyal  and  devoted  friends  —  and 
when  the  time  came  that  I  was  reluctantly  convinced 
that  I  could  continue  the  double  work  of  editor  and 
pastor  no  longer  and  the  resignation  of  my  pastorate 
became  a  necessity,  we  were  joined  together  as  co-pas- 
tors by  the  church  and  congregation  in  their  expression 
of  appreciation  and  affection. 

In  preparing  my  sermons  I  continued  the  habit 
formed  in  the  little  church  in  Cornwall.  The  mornings 
were  spent,  not  in  the  composition  of  sermons,  but  in 
general  courses  of  study.  This  was  necessitated  both  by 
my  editorial  duties  and  by  my  Sunday  evening  lectures. 
The  Fourth  Commandment  is  not  a  statute,  but  the 
interpretation  of  a  natural  law.  Every  man  needs  for 
his  best  development  some  stated  time,  free  from  care 
and  toil,  for  rest,  recuperation,  and  ministry  to  the 
higher  life.  The  minister  needs  this  at  least  as  much 
as  the  layman.  Saturday  was  my  rest  day.  In  it  I 
planned  to  do  no  manner  of  work,  and  I  think  I  observed 
my  Sabbath  as  consistently  as  most  Christians  observe 
their  Sunday.  I  also  took  a  rest  of  one  or  two  hours 
every  afternoon  after  the  midday  meal  —  a  rest  which, 
I  said  to  my  wife,  was  not  to  be  disturbed  unless  the 


378  REMINISCENCES 

house  caught  fire  and  the  fire  had  reached  the  second 
story.  The  servants  imbibed  her  spirit  of  care-taking, 
and  I  was  rarely  disturbed.  The  last  six  years  of  my  pas- 
torate my  library,  a  room  well  lined  with  books,  overlooked 
the  East  River,  and  gave  me  in  the  winter  evenings,  when 
the  ofiice  buildings  were  lighted,  a  wonderful  fairy-like 
picture.  There  were  times  when,  looking  down  from  the 
repose  of  my  study  upon  the  bustling  metropolis,  so 
remote  and  yet  so  near,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  could 
imagine  how  its  worries  and  its  ambitions  might  appear 
to  a  citizen  of  the  celestial  sphere;  it  gave  me  of  the 
world  an  unworldly  vision.  These  hours  of  repose 
were,  I  think,  the  most  valuable  hours  of  the  day,  and 
the  day  of  repose  was  the  most  valuable  day  of  the 
week.  I  had  but  one  rule  for  its  observance  —  to  do  no 
manner  of  work.  Sometimes  I  read  a  novel  or  a  poem 
or  a  devotional  book;  sometimes  I  slept;  sometimes  I 
simply  listened.  In  June,  1889,  I  preached  in  Plymouth 
Church  a  sermon,  born  of  my  own  experience,  on  "List- 
ening to  God."  From  this  sermon  I  quote  a  few  sentences 
because  they  will  interpret  to  the  reader  my  meaning :  — 

The  art  of  listening  is  an  art;  but  of  all  forms  and  phases  of 
that  art  spiritual  listening  is  the  highest.  To  listen  to  the 
voice  of  men,  getting  from  your  next-door  neighbor  some 
knowledge  that  you  do  not  possess;  standing  on  the  front  plat- 
form of  the  horse-car,  and  getting  out  of  the  driver  something 
you  did  not  know  before;  talking  over  the  gate  with  the  farmer 
where  you  are  spending  your  summer,  and  getting  some  new 
notion  of  life  that  you  did  not  before  possess;  getting  from 
every  kind  of  teaching  and  out  of  every  man  you  meet  some 
new  impulse  and  some  new  equipment  —  this  is  art.  But  to 
stand  face  to  face  with  the  Almighty,  to  listen  to  the  voice  that 
makes  no  trembling  on  the  air,  to  receive  the  impression  that 
produces  no  external  symbol  on  the  printed  page,  to  hear  God 
■ —  that  is  the  highest  of  all. 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  379 

In  this  "Still  Hour,"  as  Professor  Austin  Phelps  has 
termed  it,  my  sermons  came  to  me  I  know  not  how. 
Two  experiences,  not  unique  except  in  their  dramatic 
circumstance,  illustrate  this  coming. 

One  Saturday  at  Cornwall  during  my  summer  vaca- 
tion I  received  a  telegram  from  the  secretary  of  the 
National  Prison  Reform  Association,  asking  me  to 
preach  the  sermon  at  the  annual  meeting  to  be  held  the 
Sunday  of  the  week  following  at  Saratoga  Springs.  I 
was  sure  that  my  friend  would  not  have  telegraphed  me 
unless  he  had  been  in  some  special  need,  and,  after  some 
hesitation,  I  telegraphed  back  my  consent.  I  had  made 
a  little  journalistic  study  of  prison  reform  and  had  spoken 
briefly  at  one  local  meeting,  but  my  knowledge  was 
slight  and  superficial.  The  week  which  followed  was 
especially  absorbed  in  editorial  work.  I  tried  in  vain 
to  get  a  theme  for  my  Sunday  sermon.  To  preach  one 
having  no  bearing  on  prison  reform  seemed  inadequate; 
to  preach  as  though  I  were  an  expert  to  a  congregation 
made  up  of  experts  appeared  absurd.  I  asked  for  the 
annual  report  of  the  society,  but  it  did  not  come  until 
Saturday  morning,  and  then  afforded  me  no  hint. 
When  I  took  the  train  for  Saratoga  Springs  Saturday 
afternoon,  I  had  not  the  faintest  conception  of  what  my 
message  the  following  day  should  be,  and  I  was  to  preach 
to  a  crowded  church,  with  ex-President  Hayes  presid- 
ing, and  prison  wardens  and  prison  reformers  from  all 
over  the  country  in  the  congregation.  I  was  too  tired, 
and,  to  tell  the  truth,  too  alarmed,  to  think,  and  on  the 
train  I  laid  my  head  back  in  the  Pullman  car  and  slept. 
I  hoped  that  on  arrival  at  Saratoga  I  might  get  a  clue 
from  the  secretary,  but  he  was  busy  arranging  the  de- 
tails of  the  meeting  and  was  not  suggestive. 

At  length,  burdened  by  a  feeling  of  desperation  in- 


380  REMINISCENCES 

describable,  I  went  to  bed,  after  the  briefest  of  prayers, 
in  which  I  said  that  I  thought  my  Father  had  called  me 
to  Saratoga  Springs,  I  did  not  know  why,  and,  if  I 
needed  the  discipline  of  a  humiliating  failure,  I  prayed 
that  I  might  be  enabled  to  learn  the  lesson  it  was  meant 
to  teach  me,  and  then  —  I  tried  to  go  to  sleep.  Did  I? 
I  do  not  know.  I  only  know  that  in  a  very  few  moments 
I  suddenly  awoke  to  consciousness  with  my  subject,  my 
text,  and  my  sermon  in  my  mind.  Criminals  are  the 
enemies  of  society.  How  does  the  New  Testament  tell 
us  we  should  treat  our  enemies.?  "Dearly  beloved,  avenge 
not  yourselves,  but  rather  give  place  unto  wrath.  .  .  . 
If  thine  enemy  hunger,  feed  him;  if  he  thirst,  give  him 
drink.  .  .  .  Overcome  evil  with  good."  The  whole 
truth  flashed  upon  me  —  now  the  axiom  of  prison  reform- 
ers, but  then  radical  even  to  them.  We  have  no  right 
to  visit  retribution  upon  wrong-doers.  This  is  not  the 
era  of  judgment;  it  is  the  era  of  redemption.  We  have 
not  the  capacity  to  organize  or  administer  a  system  of 
retributive  justice.  Our  duty  is  to  reform,  not  to  punish, 
and  to  punish  only  that  we  may  reform.  We  should 
abandon  our  system  of  justice  and  substitute  a  system 
of  cure.  My  brain  was  on  fire.  I  jotted  the  barest  out- 
line on  a  scrap  of  paper,  and  then  tried  to  sleep  that 
I  might  be  able  on  the  morrow  to  give  to  others  the 
message  which  had  been  given  tome.  When  it  was  given, 
the  members  crowded  around  me  with  congratulations. 
I  was  formally  requested  to  furnish  it  for  publication. 
Some  friend,  knowing  my  habit  of  extemporaneous 
speech,  had  arranged,  unknown  to  me,  for  a  shorthand 
report.  It  was  published  as  reported,  with  very  slight 
revision,  and,  I  have  been  told,  served  as  a  new  and 
spiritual  definition  of  the  essential  principle  of  penology — 
fitting  the  penalty,  not  to  the  crime,  but  to  the  criminal. 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  381 

The  other  incident  occurred  in  1896  at  the  time  of 
my  brother  Austin's  death.  I  had  seen  him  on  Friday  or 
Saturday  and  knew  that  death  was  inevitable,  though 
I  did  not  think  it  was  immediate.  I  had  planned  a  ser- 
mon for  Sunday  morning  on  the  phrase  of  St.  Paul, 
"the  exceeding  sinfulness  of  sin,"  On  Saturday  nights 
I  always  slept  in  my  library.  My  breakfast  was  served 
to  me  there,  and  I  did  not  see  the  family  until  I  saw  them 
in  the  pew  at  church.  This  Sunday  morning,  when  I 
awoke,  my  wife  was  sitting  at  my  bedside.  Her  presence 
was  itself  a  preparation.  Her  message,  "Lyman,  your 
brother  Austin  died  last  night,"  did  not  therefore  sur- 
prise me.  He  was  very  dear  to  me.  How  wise  a  care- 
taker he  had  been  in  my  boyhood,  how  wise  an  adviser 
in  my  manhood!  Could  I  preach  with  such  a  dear 
brother  gone.'^  Could  I  be  true  to  my  faith  that  there  is 
no  death,  only  transition,  and  refuse  to  preach?  These 
questions  were  soon  answered,  but  I  could  not  preach 
on  the  awfulness  of  sin.  I  thrust  that  message  from 
me,  and  to  my  listening  mind  came  the  message  for  the 
day  —  Paul's  biography  of  a  child  of  God :  "For  whom  he 
did  foreknow,  he  also  did  predestinate  to  be  conformed 
to  the  image  of  his  Son,  that  he  might  be  the  first  born 
among  many  brethren.  Moreover,  whom  he  did  pre- 
destinate, them  he  also  called;  and  whom  he  called, 
them  he  also  justified;  and  whom  he  justified,  them 
he  also  glorified."  My  brother  was  known  and  loved 
in  Plymouth  Church,  for  he  had  been  one  of  Mr. 
Beecher's  counsel  in  the  great  trial.  At  the  close  of  the 
sermon,  but  not  until  the  close,  I  announced  my  brother's 
death  as  the  reason  for  the  sermon  and  paid  a  brief  trib- 
ute to  his  memory.  The  sermon  was  published  in  "The 
Outlook"  from  the  shorthand  writer's  report.  A  reader 
of  "The  Outlook"  in  another  State,  with  my  permis- 


382  REMINISCENCES 

sion,  reprinted  it  as  a  tract,  with  the  allusion  to  my 
brother  left  out  as  matter  too  personal  for  general  pub- 
lication. 

How  are  these  experiences  to  be  interpreted?  The 
mystic  will  say  the  message  was  given  to  me  by  my  un- 
seen Father.  The  rationalist  will  say  the  message  was 
the  product  of  unconscious  thinking  suddenly  made 
conscious  by  the  intellectual  crisis.  Perhaps  both  are 
correct.  Perhaps  the  Father  gives  us  his  message  in  and 
through  our  unconscious  thinking.  These  chapters  are 
not  philosophy  but  narrative,  and  I  narrate  these  ex- 
periences here,  leaving  the  reader  to  give  them  his  own 
interpretation.  I  can  only  add  that,  while  customarily 
I  had  my  theme  and  often  my  text  in  mind  as  a  subject 
of  meditation  and  reflection  throughout  the  week,  I 
rarely  attempted  to  organize  my  material  into  coherent 
form,  and  still  more  rarely  did  I  put  pen  to  paper,  until 
Sunday  morning;  and,  though  occasionally  I  had  to  make 
a  sermon,  generally  my  sermons  seemed  a  message  given, 
not  an  oration  prepared;  perhaps  I  should  say  a  growth, 
not  a  manufacture.  Had  I  written  my  sermons,  or  even 
prepared  them  with  more  attention  to  form,  they  per- 
haps would  have  been  better  as  literary  productions. 
But  by  my  method  I  went  into  the  pulpit  with  a  sur- 
plus of  nervous  energy  stored  up  by  the  guarded  rest 
of  the  previous  day  and  with  my  heart  and  mind  full  of 
a  message  which  I  was  eager  to  give  to  an  apparently 
eager  congregation.  This  combined  health  of  body  and 
enthusiasm  of  spirit  covered  a  multitude  of  defects  in 
form  and  expression. 

For  the  conduct  of  the  devotional  services  of  the 
church  I  had  made  some  unconscious  preparation  by 
editing  the  volume  entitled  "For  Family  Worship."  In 
this  volume  the  prayers  were  selected  after  a  careful 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  383 

study  of  a  broad  range  of  devotional  literature.  My 
special  preparation  I  can  best  report  by  quoting  a  para- 
graph from  my  Yale  lectures  on  preaching  entitled 
"The  Christian  Ministry":  — 

No  minister  ever  leads  a  congregation  in  public  devotion 
who  is  not  accustomed  to  go  to  God  in  private  prayer  with 
that  congregation  in  his  heart.  When  he  knows  what  his 
people  are,  when  he  knows  what  secret  life  they  hide  in  their 
masquerade  that  we  call  hfe,  when  he  has  been  accustomed 
daily  on  his  knees  in  his  closet  to  carry  their  sorrows  and  bur- 
dens to  his  Father  —  then  when  he  comes  into  the  church  he 
will  find  the  way  easy,  and  they  will  find  the  way  easy. 

One  hesitates  to  give  to  others  a  glimpse  of  such 
inner  spiritual  experiences  as  I  have  endeavored  to 
portray,  since  it  is  always  impossible  accurately  to  in- 
terpret them.  But  I  am  trying  in  this  chapter  to  tell  the 
reader  how  I  was  able,  without  any  pretense  to  oratorical 
ability,  to  follow  the  greatest  pulpit  orator  of  his  time; 
and  to  omit  these  experiences  would  be  to  misinterpret 
the  life  and  mistell  the  narrative. 

During  the  eleven  years  of  my  pastorate  in  Plymouth 
Church  I  was  not  once  absent  from  my  pulpit  on  a 
Sunday  morning  because  of  illness  until  the  illness  which 
led  to  my  resignation.  This  was  partly  due  to  a  nervous 
organization  possessing  unusual  resilience;  partly  to  a 
conscientious  observance  of  stated  periods  of  rest;  partly 
to  a  religious  conviction  that  a  child  of  God  has  no  right 
to  overtax  the  powers  which  God  has  given  to  him; 
partly  to  a  habit  of  taking  my  rest  before  work  as  a  prepa- 
ration for  it,  not  after  work  as  a  recovery  from  it,  as  a 
consequence  of  which  I  was  rarely  exhausted;  partly  to  a 
physician  who  was  also  a  very  dear  friend,  to  whose 
wise  counsel  I  probably  owe  my  life,  and  who  made  it 
his  business  not  merely  to  cure  me  when  I  was  sick  but 


S84  REMINISCENCES 

to  keep  me  well;  but,  above  all,  I  owe  this  health  to  a 
wife  who  watched  me  without  appearing  to  do  so,  guarded 
my  hours  of  rest,  and  put  the  health  of  her  husband  and 
her  children  first  in  all  her  duties.  I  remember  awaking 
one  Saturday  morning  unable  to  speak  above  a  whisper 
because  of  a  sudden  cold.  The  doctor  came,  asked  her 
what  she  had  to  do  that  morning,  received  for  reply, 
"Nothing  to  interfere  with  getting  my  husband  ready 
for  to-morrow."  *'Dry  heat  outside  and  wet  heat  inside 
every  fifteen  minutes,"  was  his  prescription.  It  was  faith- 
fully carried  out,  and  I  preached  on  Sunday  morning. 
The  two  summer  months  were  kept  as  a  vacation,  gen- 
erally spent  at  Cornwall,  sometimes  in  a  trip  abroad. 
During  these  vacation  months  very  rarely  did  I  either 
preach  or  lecture,  for  I  held  it  the  duty  of  a  minister 
to  use  the  vacation  which  the  church  has  given  him  as 
a  preparation  for  the  work  which  he  has  to  do  for  the 
church. 

The  occasional  attacks  of  acute  indigestion  to  which 
I  have  all  my  life  been  subject  grew  toward  the  end  of 
this  eleven  years  somewhat  more  frequent  and  more 
severe.  At  length,  in  October,  1898,  one  of  a  more 
threatening  character  sent  me  to  bed,  where  the  doctor 
kept  me  for  ten  days  or  two  weeks.  When  I  got  up,  he 
told  me  I  must  resign  the  pastorate.  He  said,  sub- 
stantially: "You  must  either  go  out  of  Plymouth  pulpit 
or  be  carried  out;  you  are  using  your  strength  faster 
than  you  are  accumulating  it,  and  that  can  lead  to  but 
one  result."  I,  who  had  preached  all  my  life  long  that 
the  laws  of  health  are  the  laws  of  God,  and  that  to  vio- 
late these  laws  is  disobedience  to  him,  could  not  dis- 
regard my  own  preaching.  Happily  for  me,  the  Sunday 
after  my  decision  was  reached  the  city  was  visited  by  a 
furious  snowstorm  and  only  half  a  congregation  was  pres- 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  385 

ent  when  I  read  my  resignation.  It  was  almost  to  a 
day  eleven  years  since  I  had  come  from  my  Cornwall 
home  as  a  temporary  supply;  but  it  was  three  months 
later  before  my  successor,  Dr.  Newell  Dwight  Hillis,  was 
called  and  I  actually  ceased  my  work,  and  it  was  six 
or  eight  months  before  I  was  ready  to  take  up  my  life- 
work  again  with  renewed  strength.  "My  meat,"  said 
Jesus,  "is  to  do  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me."  Congenial 
work,  inspired  by  love,  has  in  itself  a  strange  life-giving 
power,  and  often  it  is  not  till  the  work  stops  that  the 
worker  knows  how  great  has  been  the  drain  upon  his 
strength. 

I  can  find  no  words  adequate  to  express  my  sense  of 
gratitude  for  the  spirit  in  which  my  resignation  was 
received  by  the  church.  That  spirit  I  can  best  intimate 
to  the  reader  by  a  quotation  from  one  of  the  many  letters 
which  it  brought  to  me:  — 

I  fully  appreciate,  and,  with  inexpressible  regret,  must  con- 
scientiously approve,  the  grounds  of  your  decision  to  resign 
your  position  and  lay  down  your  work  as  pastor  of  Plymouth 
Church.  I  do  not  dare  to  plead  with  you  for  the  reconsidera- 
tion and  reversal  of  a  purpose  so  fraught  with  pain  and  trouble 
to  the  church  as  well  as  to  you.  Nor,  knowing  what  you  must 
suffer  in  the  prospect  of  this  separation,  will  I  add  to  your  bur- 
den at  this  time,  by  attempting  to  describe  the  universal  grief 
and  consternation  which  will  be  occasioned  in  the  church  by 
the  announcement  of  your  purpose.  I  shall  doubtless  find 
opportunity  hereafter  to  express,  for  my  brethren  as  well  as 
myself,  our  sense  of  the  inestimable  service  which  you  have 
rendered  to  Plymouth  Church,  and  our  gratitude  to  God  for 
the  ten  years  of  your  faithful  and  inspiring  ministrations. 
Under  the  divine  guidance,  we  owe  it  to  you  that  Plymouth 
Church,  surviving  the  shock  of  its  sudden  and  great  bereave- 
ment through  the  death  of  Mr.  Beecher,  has  stood  for  more 
than  ten  years,  and  still  stands,  compact,  full-armed,  and  alert 
for  the  work  of  the  Master. 


386  REMINISCENCES 

The  resignation  was  not  accepted  until  some  gentle- 
men of  the  church  had  called  on  my  physician  and  satis- 
fied themselves  that  no  vacation  and  no  attempted 
lessening  of  my  labor  would  justify  my  continuing  in  the 
pastorate.  The  announcement  of  the  resignation  was 
followed  by  letters  not  only  from  members  of  the  church 
and  congregation  but  from  all  over  the  country;  some 
from  conservative,  some  from  progressive  clergymen; 
some  from  distant  friends,  some  from  friends  whom  I 
had  never  seen  and  never  shall  see.  They  were  not 
letters  of  praise  or  congratulation,  though  praise  and 
congratulation  were  not  wanting;  they  were  letters 
of  thanks  for  service  rendered  by  my  ministry  to  the 
life  of  faith  and  hope  and  love.  They  were  not  written 
for  publication  and  may  not  be  given  to  the  public; 
but  they  have  brought  back  to  me,  as  I  have  been 
rereading  them  in  preparation  for  this  chapter,  those 
sad  days  and  glad  days,  for  they  were  both  sad  and  glad, 
and  have  given  a  new  inspiration  to  my  faith  that  the 
real  power  of  the  modern  preacher,  as  of  the  ancient 
prophet,  lies,  not  in  an  appeal  to  either  the  church  or 
the  Bible,  but  to  the  life  of  God  which  is  in  the  soul  of 
every  man,  and  that  without  the  arts  of  the  orator  and 
the  learning  of  the  scholar  he  does  not  speak  in  vain 
who  can  sincerely  say  to  himself  in  the  words  of  his 
Master,  "I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life,  and 
that  they  might  have  it  more  abundantly." 

The  prevailing  note  of  the  newspaper  press  through- 
out the  country  was  one  of  friendliness,  even  in  those 
cases  in  which  this  friendliness  was  accompanied  with 
criticism.  From  an  editorial  in  the  New  York  "Tribune " 
I  venture  to  quote  one  paragraph  because,  in  stating 
what  I  had  done  during  those  eleven  years,  it  stated  with 
equal  clearness  and  brevity  what  I  had  desired  to  do; 


PLYMOUTH  CHURCH  387 

and  because,  from  a  writer  wholly  unknown  to  me,  it 
furnishes  an  answer  to  those  who  had  charged  me  with 
shaking  the  faith  of  the  unwary  by  my  preaching:  — 

The  determination  of  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  to  retire  from  the 
pulpit  will  be  regretted  by  thousands  outside  of  Plymouth 
Church,  The  range  of  his  influence  has  been  great,  but  it  is 
as  a  preacher  that  he  has  occupied  a  unique  place  and  given 
a  new  vitality  to  the  Christianity  of  many  people  who  found 
difiiculty  in  reconciling  the  religion  of  their  traditions  with  the 
secular  thought  of  their  time.  The  great  body  of  Christians, 
perhaps,  need  no  such  reconciling.  Others  find  satisfaction  in 
the  most  radical  departure  from  orthodoxy.  But  there  is  a 
middle  class  who  wish  to  hold  the  old  faith,  but  who  are  bound 
to  face  its  problems  rationally  and  frankly.  To  them  a  man 
like  Lyman  Abbott  is  a  tower  of  strength,  a  conservative 
force,  and  at  the  same  time  an  intellectual  stimulus.  Not 
to  have  his  regular  teaching  will  be  a  serious  deprivation  to 
those  who  gathered  from  week  to  week  to  hear  him,  and  it  will 
also  be  a  loss  to  others  who  believed  in  him  and  were  more  seri- 
ous and  reverently  thoughtful  because  of  him,  even  though  they 
did  not  often  come  under  his  personal  ministrations. 

I  look  back  upon  those  eleven  years  of  pastoral  and 
editorial  labor  with  unconcealed  thankfulness.  There 
was  plenty  of  hard  work,  sometimes  criticism,  sometimes 
friction;  but  on  the  whole  they  were  years  of  peace  and 
exhilaration.  My  wife  was  my  partner  in  the  under- 
taking, and  I  sincerely  think  that  such  success  as  at- 
tended our  joint  work  was  quite  as  much  due  to  her 
wise  counsels,  unflagging  energy,  and  unfailing  tact  as 
to  my  activities.  My  associates  both  in  the  church  and 
in  the  newspaper  were  devoted  friends,  never  urging 
duty  upon  me,  always  endeavoring  to  take  work  from  me. 
That  the  church  was  actuated  by  the  same  spirit  is  in- 
dicated by  the  fact  that  one  of  the  entertainments  given 
by  the  Plymouth  League  was  a  mock  trial  in  which  their 
pastor  was  indicted  for  violating  the  eight-hour  law  by 


388  REMINISCENCES 

his  overwork.  Looking  back  upon  those  eleven  years, 
not  without  regrets  for  some  faults  and  failures,  not 
without  a  consciousness  that  a  stronger  man  could 
/  and  would  have  accomplished  some  results  which  I 
could  not  even  attempt,  still  I  could  say  reverently  to 
my  Father,  "I  have  finished  the  work  thou  gavest  me 
to  do." 

In  this  and  the  preceding  chapter  I  have  said  nothing 
of  the  substance  of  my  teaching  in  either  press  or  pul- 
pit. In  the  immediately  succeeding  chapters  I  propose 
to  trace  briefly  the  industrial,  political,  and  religious 
changes  which  have  taken  place  in  this  country  during 
the  past  sixty  years  as  I  have  seen  them  and  partici- 
pated in  them  by  both  written  contributions  and  spoken 
addresses. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

AN   INDUSTRIAL   REVOLUTION^ 

THE  industrial  systems  of  the  world  may  be  classi- 
fied in  three  groups :  in  the  first  the  capitalist  owns 
the  laborer  —  slavery;  in  the  second  the  capital- 
ist owns  the  land,  and  as  landowner  owes  protection  to 
the  laborer,  the  laborer  owes  service  to  the  landowner 
—  serfdom  or  feudalism;  in  the  third  the  capitalist  owns 
the  tools  and  implements  of  organized  industry,  and 
the  terms  and  conditions  on  which  the  laborers  may  use 
them  for  their  mutual  benefit  are  determined  by  free 
contract  —  the  wages  system  or  capitalism.  All  these 
systems  existed  in  the  civilized  world  in  the  first  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century  —  slavery  in  the  British  West 
Indies  and  the  Southern  States  of  America;  serfdom  or 
feudalism  in  Russia;  the  wages  system  or  capitalism  in 
western  Europe  and  the  Northern  States  of  America. 
The  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  West  Indies  and  in  the 
United  States,  and  the  abolition  of  serfdom  in  Russia, 
left  capitalism  the  prevailing  system  throughout  the 
civilized  world.  In  this  system  labor  was  regarded  as  a 
commodity  which  the  laborer  had  to  sell  and  the  capi- 
talist wished  to  buy.  That  there  was  any  relation  of 
mutual  obligation  between  the  laborer  and  the  capitalist 
was  habitually  ignored  and  sometimes  explicitly  denied. 

*  The  quotations  in  this  and  the  succeeding  chapter  are  generally  from 
The  Outlook  unless  otherwise  indicated.  The  articles  from  which  these  quo- 
tations are  taken  are  not  always  from  my  pen,  but  they  represent  views  which, 
at  the  time  the  article  was  published,  I  was  advocating. 


390  REMINISCENCES 

"An  employer,"  said  a  defender  of  this  system,  "is 
under  no  more  financial  obligation  to  his  workmen  after 
he  has  paid  their  current  wages  than  they  are  to  him,  or 
to  a  passer-by  on  the  street,  whom  they  never  saw."  ^ 

My  retirement  from  the  executive  work  of  the  Freed- 
man's  Union  Commission  and  from  the  rush  of  a  city 
life  gave  me  the  opportunity,  and  existing  conditions 
gave  me  the  incentive,  to  make  a  study  of  this  system 
as  it  was  presented  by  the  conditions  of  labor  in  the  fac- 
tories and  mines  in  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain. 
My  practical  wife  had  not  much  faith  in  purely  theo- 
retical reform,  and  with  characteristic  tact  early  turned 
my  attention  from  the  labor  problem  of  the  books  to  the 
labor  problem  of  life.  I  was  engaged  in  writing  my  first 
essay  on  the  subject  when  she  came  to  me  with  some 
question  respecting  the  cook  which  she  jocosely  sug- 
gested to  me  to  solve.  I  caught  her  purpose  and  an- 
swered her  in  the  same  spirit. 

"I  am  engaged,"  I  replied,  "in  solving  the  labor 
problem  of  the  universe.  Do  you  expect  me  to  lay  aside 
this  great  problem  to  consider  a  question  of  the  cook.'*" 

"Well,"  she  said,  "if  you  will  solve  the  problem  of  the 
cooks,  I  will  solve  the  labor  problem  of  the  universe." 

I  declined  to  make  the  exchange.  But  this  concrete 
illustration  made  clearer  to  me  than  before  the  truth 
that  the  labor  problem  is  a  human  problem,  and  can- 
not be  solved  by  a  student  in  his  library;  that  while  I 
might  contribute  something  to  its  solution  by  the  dis- 
semination of  information  and  the  discussion  of  theories, 
the  real  solution  must  be  made  by  practical  cooperation 
between  the  laborer  and  the  capitalist  in  the  workshop, 
the  factory,  and  the  mine.  While  after  that  incident  my 
attention  vibrated  somewhat  between  the  rights  and 

1  W.  A.  Croffut,  "What  Rights  Have  Laborers?"    Fixrum,  May,  1886. 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  391 

duties  of  the  employer  and  those  of  the  employed,  I 
never  entirely  forgot  the  lesson  that  the  labor  problem 
depends  for  its  final  solution  upon  the  spirit  which  men 
and  women  carry  into  their  daily  vocations. 

Two  motives  conspired  to  make  this  labor  problem  a 
chief  theme  of  my  study  for  the  next  forty-five  years  — 
my  interest  as  a  reformer  in  the  welfare  of  my  fellow- 
men,  and  my  interest  as  a  journalist  in  the  most  im- 
portant public  question  of  the  time. 

It  was  an  age  of  curious  contrasts,  of  sordid  selfish- 
ness and  of  impracticable  idealism.  Each,  by  reaction, 
intensified  the  other.  The  unconscious  cruelty  perpe- 
trated by  the  current  forms  of  industry  made  reformers 
too  impatient  to  consider  gradual  remedies.  The  im- 
practicability of  their  panaceas  confirmed  the  practical 
business  men  in  their  conviction  that  the  injustices  of 
the  prevailing  industrial  system  were  unavoidable,  and 
the  ministerial  representatives  of  the  capitalistic  system 
were  fond  of  quoting  the  text,  "The  poor  ye  have  with 
you  always,"  without  remembering  the  addition,  "and 
whensoever  ye  will  ye  may  do  them  good." 

The  socialistic  publications  of  the  day  devoted  much 
of  their  space  to  portraying  the  economic,  the  educa- 
tional, the  moral,  and  the  political  evils  produced  by 
the  existing  industrial  system.  This  was  quite  right. 
The  orthodox  theologian  assures  us  that  conviction  of 
sin  is  the  first  stage  in  conversion.  It  is  certain  that  con-  \y 
viction  of  social  sin  is  the  first  stage  in  social  reform. 
The  greatest  obstacle  to  any  organic  movement  for 
public  improvement  is  furnished  by  the  optimist  who 
thinks  that  everything  is  already  as  it  should  be.  I  did 
not,  however,  take  these  socialistic  indictments  of  so- 
ciety altogether  seriously.  I  was  lawyer  enough  to  rec- 
ognize the  radical  difference  between  the  speech  of  a 


392  REMINISCENCES 

prosecuting  attorney  and  the  charge  of  an  impartial 
judge.  But  they  compelled  me  to  study  in  more  scien- 
tific treatises  the  conditions  of  the  hand-workers  through- 
out the  world  —  the  coolies  in  India,  the  peasants  in 
Russia,  Italy,  and  France,  the  peons  in  South  America, 
and  the  wage-earners  in  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States. 

I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Professor  R.  T.  Ely,  the 
first  American,  so  far  as  I  know,  to  treat  economics  as  a 
human  study;  the  first  one  to  regard  the  industrial 
problem  as  one,  not  of  labor  and  capital,  but  of  laborers 
and  capitalists;  the  first  one  to  become  personally  ac- 
quainted with  workingmen,  to  attend  their  meetings  —  I 
believe  joining  a  labor  union  —  to  consider  them  not  as 
machines  supposedly  governed  solely  by  self-interest,  but 
as  men  with  wives  and  children,  homes  and  aspirations, 
and,  like  other  men,  governed  by  a  great  variety  of  con- 
flicting motives.  I  visited  the  mines  and  factory  towns 
of  America.  I  had  visited  the  slums  of  New  York  City, 
as  described  in  a  previous  chapter,  and  seen  one  room 
occupied  by  two  families,  which  I  was  credibly  informed 
had  previously  been  occupied  by  four,  one  in  each  corner. 
I  followed  Mr.  Valentine's  suggestion,  and  one  winter 
spent  six  weeks  in  England,  studying  its  educational, 
political,  and  industrial  problems.  I  found  the  slum 
conditions  in  London  worse  than  those  in  New  York  in 
one  important  respect.  In  New  York  men  and  women 
were  climbing  up;  in  London  they  were  sinking  down. 
In  New  York  they  had  hopes  for  their  children,  if  not 
for  themselves;  in  London  they  lived  in  a  dull  content 
worse  than  despair.  I  found  an  increasing  number  of 
earnest  men  and  women  of  all  faiths  engaged  in  the 
study  of  the  same  problem  and  in  endeavors  to  find  a 
remedy  for  the  existing  conditions.   I  visited  in  London 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  393 

the  model  Waterlow  houses  and  Peabody  houses,  the 
first  practical  efforts  to  improve  the  housing  of  the  poor. 
I  visited  Toynbee  Hall,  the  first  of  the  social  settlements 
which  now  exist  in  every  large  city  and  are  beginning  to 
extend  into  our  smaller  towns  and  villages.  In  this  coun- 
try I  visited  Hull  House  in  Chicago,  and  similar  though 
less  known  settlements  in  New  York.  The  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury  had  begun  his  agitation  for  the  improve- 
ment of  the  condition  of  the  laboring  classes  in  England, 
and  less  famous  followers  of  his  were  agitating  in  Amer- 
ica for  better  conditions  here.  But  these  sporadic 
philanthropies  had  done  little  more,  when  I  began  my 
studies,  than  to  emphasize  the  need  of  a  united  endeavor 
to  ascertain  the  cause  and  cure  of  industrial  conditions. 

My  study  of  these  conditions,  partly  through  my  own 
observations,  partly  through  the  reports  of  other  more 
careful  and  thorough  students,  showed  that  the  doc- 
trine that  the  State  owes  no  other  duty  to  the  laborer 
than  to  leave  him  free  to  make  the  best  bargain  he  can, 
and  the  employer  owes  him  no  other  duty  than  to  pay 
him  the  current  wages,  had  produced  such  results  as 
these: — 

In  England  agricultural  laborers  breakfasting  on 
"tea-kettle  broth"  —  hot  water  poured  on  bread  and 
flavored  with  onion  —  dining  on  bread  and  hard  cheese, 
supping  on  potatoes  or  cabbage  greased  with  a  bit  of  J 
fat  bacon,  never  eating  meat  more  than  once  a  week, 
and  living  in  hovels  described  as  "not  fit  to  house  pigs 
in";  in  Manchester,  Leeds,  in  London,  factory  employees 
dwelling  in  greater  moral  and  physical  degradation  than 
that  of  the  prisoners  for  whose  reclamation  the  great 
prison  reformer  Howard  had  labored;  women  and  little 
children  in  the  coal  mines  dragging  loaded  trucks  along 
low  passages,  inch-deep  in  water,  going  on  all  fours  like 


S94  REMINISCENCES 

horses,  with  the  chains  fastened  around  their  half-naked 
bodies;  and  all  of  them,  women  and  children  as  well  as 
men,  working  from  ten  to  sixteen  hours  a  day;  over  a 
quarter  of  the  population  of  London,  the  greatest  city 
of  Christendom,  living  in  poverty;  and  one  thirty-fourth 
of  the  entire  population  of  England  and  Wales  dependent 
upon  public  or  private  charity.  Poverty  was  accounted 
by  political  economists  as  a  burden  upon  society  to  be 
classed  with  war,  pestilence,  and  crime,  and  by  some  of 
them  the  burden  of  poverty  was  regarded  as  only  second 
to  that  of  war.  In  most  of  the  communities  where  the 
wages  system  prevailed  nothing  was  done  for  either  the 
protection  or  the  education  of  the  children  except  by 
private  charity,  and  the  poverty  which  the  wages 
system  created  was  in  turn  a  principal  cause  of  two  of 
the  other  great  burdens  of  society — crime  and  pestilence. 

The  conditions  in  America  were  not  comparable  to 
these  in  Great  Britain,  but  the  same  industrial  system 
was  certain  to  produce  similar  conditions  in  America  in 
the  fullness  of  time;  and  even  in  America  they  were 
often  intolerable.  Men  often  worked  twelve,  fourteen, 
and  sometimes  sixteen  hours  in  the  day.  In  certain  of 
the  iron  industries,  in  which  two  shifts  were  employed, 
they  worked  habitually  twelve  hours  a  day,  including 
holidays  and  Sundays.  No  movement  to  restrict  child 
labor  had  been  initiated  in  America,  and  no  attempt 
had  been  made  to  regulate  by  law  either  the  hours  or 
the  conditions  of  women's  work. 

In  the  coal  mines  of  Pennsylvania  over  six  thousand 
boys  under  fourteen  years  of  age  were  working  nine 
hours  a  day  in  an  atmosphere  thick  with  coal-dust, 
which  in  a  few  minutes'  visit  "will  coat  the  lungs  and 
throat  with  a  black  dust  which  twenty-four  hours  of 
pure  air  cannot  clear  from  the  mucous  linings."  Women 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  395 

employed  in  factories  and  shops  were  working  from  ten 
to  fifteen  hours  a  day,  often  in  continuous  and  monoto- 
nous labor  with  the  result,  established  by  indisputable 
scientific  and  medical  evidence,  that  both  body  and  mind 
were  exhausted  and  depressed,  and  in  many  cases  the 
possibility  of  motherhood  was  destroyed.  The  condi- 
tion of  women  working  in  the  tenements  was  no  better. 
Their  constant  treading  of  the  machine  undermined 
their  health;  seamstresses  developed  anaemia,  tubercu- 
losis, pelvic  diseases;  cigar-makers  developed  consump- 
tion to  the  extent  of  ninety  per  cent.  Such  women,  liv- 
ing in  dirty  dwellings  without  air  or  light,  bore  children 
starved  before  they  were  born,  infected  with  hereditary 
disease,  and  destined  either  to  die  in  childhood  or  to 
populate  asylums,  hospitals,  or  penitentiaries.^ 

An  industrial  system  which  produced  poverty  in  a 
land  of  wealth  and  hunger  in  a  land  of  plenty,  which 
incited  to  crime  and  begot  criminals,  invited  needless 
disease,  bred  pestilence  and  multiplied  deaths,  which 
robbed  men  and  women  of  their  homes  and  which  robbed 
children  of  their  fathers  and  mothers,  their  education, 
and  their  play  hours,  was  an  unjust  and  intolerable 
system.  The  joy  of  my  own  home,  the  fellowship  with 
my  busy  but  not  driven  wife,  the  companionship  of  my 
children,  and  my  happiness  in  their  intellectual,  moral, 
and  physical  growth,  intensified  my  anger  —  I  hope  it 
was  a  righteous  anger  —  against  the  system  which  denied 

^  Authorities  for  these  statements  are  Professor  Francis  A.  Walker,  The 
Wages  Question,  and  authorities  cited  by  him;  Trevelyan,  The  Life  of  John 
Bright;  the  Encyclopcedia  Britannica  (ninth  edition);  Charles  Booth's  monu- 
mental survey  of  London,  Life  and  Labor  in  London;  the  brief  presented  to 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  1909,  and  the  unanimous  decision  of  that 
court  based  on  the  facts  stated  in  the  brief,  sustaining  the  constitutionality 
of  the  law  limiting  the  hours  of  labor  for  women;  reports  official  and  unofficial 
in  The  Outlook;  and  authorities  cited  in  my  Christianity  and  Social  Problems 
and  The  Spirit  of  Democracy. 


396  REMINISCENCES 

these  joys  to  fellow-men  who  were  as  justly  entitled  to 
them  as  myself.  These  wrongs  were  what  first  aroused 
in  me,  fresh  from  the  anti-slavery  campaign,  the  resolve 
to  do  the  little  I  could  for  the  emancipation  of  my  broth- 
ers from  this  bondage.  My  realization  of  other  political 
and  social  evils  growing  out  of  the  industrial  system 
came  with  my  further  studies  and  my  further  endeavors 
to  take  part  with  others  in  the  work  of  reformation. 

For  a  time  I  could  do  nothing  except  describe  condi- 
tions and  emphasize  the  need  for  reform.  The  American 
people  seemed  to  be  asleep,  and  I  longed  to  arouse  them. 
"The  Outlook,"  then  the  "Christian  Union,"  had  a 
limited  circulation,  not  exceeding  fifteen  or  twenty 
thousand.  It  went  chiefly  to  the  employing  class,  which 
was  an  advantage,  but  its  voice  was  heard  only  in  a 
limited  circle.  I  longed  for  a  larger  field  and  a  more  elo- 
quent pen.  Invitations  began  to  come  to  me  to  address 
clubs,  conventions,  dinners,  and  ecclesiastical  assem- 
blies, and  wherever  I  could  do  so  with  propriety  I  made 
the  industrial  problem  my  theme.  It  became  a  leading 
topic  of  my  editorials. 

In  February,  1885,  I  began  the  publication  of  a  series 
of  articles  on  the  Home  Heathen  of  Boston,  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  Cincinnati,  Chicago,  and  St.  Louis,  each 
written  by  a  clergyman  living  in  the  city  whose  condi- 
tions he  described.  My  object  was  to  make  my  half  of 
the  world  see  how  the  other  half  lived.  These  articles 
appealed  to  the  humanity  of  my  readers;  at  the  same 
time,  in  an  editorial  entitled  "Ominous  Indications,"  I 
appealed  to  their  fears.  I  pointed  out  the  danger  to 
America  from  the  growing  industrial  unrest.    I  said :  — 

During  the  last  few  weeks  Chicago  papers  have  contained 
reports  of  military  drills  in  halls  by  socialistic  organizations; 
Pennsylvania  papers  depict  a  spirit  of  deepening  discontent 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  397 

among  the  unemployed  in  and  about  Pittsburg;  and  the  New 
York  papers  give  the  results  of  an  informal  census  of  the 
Anarchists  of  New  York,  which  even  the  most  optimistic  esti- 
mate to  number  several  hundred.  These  are  the  men  that  are 
ready  for  ruin  to-day;  and  how  many  are  there  whom  any  mi- 
toward  circumstances  might  rally  to  swell  their  ranks  and  fol- 
low their  leadership  to-morrow? 

This  discontent  was  not  without  cause;  according  to 
Bradstreet,  three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  factory 
employees  were  without  work;  men  in  the  Belleville 
coal-field  of  Illinois  received  but  three  dollars  a  week  as 
their  regular  wage;  in  Hocking  Valley  little  children  and 
women  were  going  from  door  to  door  asking  for  rags  to 
clothe  themselves.  The  revolutionary  leaders  declared 
that  revolution  was  coming  of  itself  and  that  the  time 
was  near  when  they  could  mount  to  ride  the  whirlwind 
and  guide  the  storm.  Two  weeks  later  I  repeated  the 
same  warning  of  "An  Impending  Revolution,"  and 
pointed  out  the  causes  which  were  leading  to  it.  Political 
economists,  I  said,  tell  us  that  under  our  present  indus- 
trial system  the  cost  of  subsistence  determines  the  rate 
of  wages,  which  means  that  workingmen  cannot  earn 
more  by  their  labor  than  barely  enough  for  their  sup- 
port. Workingmen  are  therefore  compelled  to  live  from 
hand  to  mouth,  always  near  the  grave  and  always  liable 
to  see  their  loved  ones  dropping  into  it  for  want  of  the 
simplest  necessities  of  life  —  good  food,  good  water,  and 
good  air.  And  I  quoted  from  Elisee  Reclus  in  the  "Con- 
temporary Review"  the  following  paragraph  and  called 
for  the  answer  to  it :  — 

The  mean  mortality  among  the  well-to-do  is,  at  the  utmost, 
one  in  sixty.  Now,  the  population  of  Europe  being  a  third  of 
a  thousand  millions,  the  average  deaths,  according  to  the  rate 
of  mortality  among  the  fortunate,  should  not  exceed  five  mil- 
lions.   They  are  three  times  five  millions!     What  have  we 


398  REMINISCENCES 

done  with  these  ten  million  human  beings  killed  before  their 
time?  If  it  be  true  that  we  have  duties  one  towards  the  other, 
are  we  not  responsible  for  the  servitude,  the  cold,  the  hunger, 
the  miseries  of  every  sort,  which  doom  the  unfortunate  to  un- 
timely deaths?  ^ 

Three  weeks  later,  in  an  editorial  entitled  "The  So- 
cialistic Indictment,"  I  gave  a  summary  of  the  charges 
brought  by  socialists  against  the  modern  industrial  sys- 
tem, and  said:  "We  mean  ourselves  to  study  this  in- 
dictment, neither  in  panic  nor  in  prejudice,  and  to 
measure,  as  well  as  we  can,  its  truth.  It  shall  not  be 
our  fault  if  our  readers  do  not  study  it  also."  And  I 
narrated  with  gratification  an  incident  reported  to  me 
by  a  reader  of  the  "Christian  Union"  who  had  met 
a  radical  socialistic  leader  from  the  West  who  de- 
nounced the  "Christian  Union"  with  hot  and  profane 
invective  and  declared  that  it  was  "doing  more  to  defeat 
the  revolutionary  designs  of  the  socialists  than  all  the 
rest  of  the  religious  papers  put  together,  by  calling  the 
attention  of  the  public  to  facts  which  had  hitherto 
escaped  public  attention,  and  by  endeavoring  with 
Christianity  to  patch  up  reforms  of  evils  on  whose  ex- 
istence the  socialists  depend  to  destroy  both  Church 
and  State." 

Seven  months  later,  November,  1885,  I  contributed 
to  the  "Century  Magazine"  an  article  in  the  same  spirit, 
entitled  "Danger  Ahead,"  pointing  out  the  perils  to 
American  society  in  the  then  existing  conditions :  an  un- 
regulated immigration;  unhindered  freedom  of  speech 
for  the  agitators;  dynamite  that  could  be  carried  in  a 
carpetbag;  half  of  our  workers  wage- workers  and  a  vast 
majority  of  them  either  of  foreign  birth  or  children  of 

^  "An  Anarchist  on  Anarchy,"  by  Elisee  Reclua,  Contemporary  Review, 
May,  1884. 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  399 

foreign-born  parents,  all  of  them  restless  and  growing 
more  so,  many  of  them  acknowledging  no  fealty  to  any 
religion  which  teaches  them  the  duty  or  endows  them 
with  the  power  of  self-restraint,  and  taught  by  their 
foreign  experience  to  believe  that  government  is  des- 
potism, that  property  is  theft,  and  spoliation  is  redress, 
and  having  some  ground  for  their  philosophy  in  the  facts 
of  modern  life.  "A  youth  starts  in  life  as  a  deck  hand  on 
a  river  steamer;  in  half  a  century  he  has  amassed  a  for- 
tune of  seventy  millions.  Another  begins  life  with  a 
mouse-trap;  in  twenty-seven  years  he  exhibits  securities 
worth  a  hundred  millions.  Society  is  a  joint  stock  con- 
cern. These  are  the  profits  which  these  two  railroad 
kings  have  taken  from  it.  Have  they  earned  them.^*  Do 
the  seventy  millions  in  the  one  case  and  the  hundred 
millions  in  the  other  represent  what  they  have  added  to 
the  common  stock .f^"  I  did  not  think  so.  There  are,  I 
said,  only  three  ways  by  which  man  can  acquire  wealth: 
by  industry,  by  gift,  or  by  robbery.  And  "society  is  or- 
ganized in  the  interest  of  robbery  whenever  it  is  so  or- 
ganized as  to  enable  men  by  their  sagacity  to  take  out 
of  the  world  wealth  whose  equivalent  they  have  never 
put  into  the  world.  This  is  the  complaint,  and  the  just 
complaint,  of  the  laboring  classes."  Bitterness  was 
added  to  that  complaint  because  they  saw  more  or  less 
clearly  that  this  money  had  been  made,  not  by  industry, 
but  by  gambling;  and  that  this  gambling  had  been  made 
possible  by  means  of  great  corporations.  "These  cor- 
porations," I  said,  "are  already  a  power  in  the  State 
greater  than  the  State  itself.  They  control  the  United 
States  Senate,  if  not  the  United  States  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives, and  the  legislatures  of  several  of  our  States. 
They  have  autocratic  powers  bestowed  upon  them. 
They  fix  the  rates  of  transportation  of  goods  and  pas- 


400  REMINISCENCES 

sengers;  they  determine  the  conditions  on  which  and 
the  prices  at  which  telegraphic  communication  may  be 
carried  on  between  different  parts  of  the  country;  they 
are  absolute  masters  both  of  the  nerves  and  the  arteries 
of  the  body  politic."  And  these  evils,  I  pointed  out, 
were  enhanced  because  "the  stocks  of  these  great  cor- 
porations are  turned  into  dice  by  which  gigantic  gamb- 
ling operations  are  carried  on,  operations  in  which  for- 
tunes are  lost  and  made  in  a  day,  operations  by  which 
men  are  tempted  from  honest  industry  to  their  ruin, 
and  other  more  honest  men  who  resist  the  temptations 
are  involved  in  the  ruin  which  a  common  wreck  inflicts 
upon  the  community." 

Six  months  later  came  the  Haymarket  tragedy  in 
Chicago. 

Twenty  years  before,  an  International  Workingmen's 
Association  had  been  organized  to  secure  the  complete 
emancipation  of  the  working  classes.  Factional  fights 
destroyed  that  organization  in  Europe.  But  the  more 
radical  faction  organized  a  society  in  the  United  States 
whose  avowed  object  was  the  destruction  of  all  the  ex- 
isting class  rule  "by  energetic,  relentless,  revolutionary 
and  international  action."  Its  platform  aflSrmed  Proud- 
hon's  aphorism  "Property  is  robbery";  proposed  "the 
forcible  overthrow  of  all  existing  arrangements,"  and 
declared  that  "massacres  of  the  people's  enemies  must 
be  instituted;  the  war  cannot  terminate  until  the  enemy 
(the  beast  of  property)  has  been  pursued  to  its  last  lurk- 
ing-place and  totally  destroyed."  A  public  meeting  was 
called  in  Haymarket  Square,  Chicago,  by  the  leaders  of 
this  organization,  at  the  time  of  a  strike.  Fully  fifteen 
hundred  people  responded  to  the  call,  but  fortunately  a 
brisk  shower  diminished  the  crowd  to  about  half  that 
number.  The  leaders  converted  a  wagon  into  a  platform 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  401 

from  which  the  speakers  addressed  the  crowd.  While 
one  of  them  was  calling  on  his  auditors  to  put  these 
revolutionary  principles  into  practice,  a  body  of  twenty- 
four  policemen  appeared  to  disperse  the  meeting  and  to 
arrest  the  leaders.  Into  this  group  of  policemen  a  bomb 
was  thrown.  With  the  exception  of  three  of  the  police, 
who  were  at  the  head  of  their  men  and  nearest  to  the 
speaker,  every  man  in  this  company  of  oflBcers  was  in- 
jured; one  was  killed  outright,  six  died  subsequently 
from  their  injuries,  and  others  were  crippled  for  life. 
But  not  a  policeman  wavered,  and,  being  speedily  rein- 
forced, they  broke  up  the  mob  and  arrested  four  of  the 
anarchists;  others  of  the  company  were  subsequently 
arrested,  and  seven  were  found  guilty  of  murder  and 
declared  by  the  jury  to  be  worthy  of  death. 

Tragic  as  this  occurrence  was,  it  served  a  useful  pur- 
pose. It  put  an  end  to  the  International  in  America 
and  awakened  the  complacent  and  self-satisfied  nation 
to  the  existing  perils.  And  it  demanded  of  the  reformers 
that,  instead  of  dwelling  on  these  perils,  they  direct  their 
thoughts  to  a  study  of  the  question  how  the  evils  could 
be  cured  and  the  perils  averted.  The  principal  remedies 
theretofore  proposed  by  social  reformers  may  be  con- 
veniently grouped  in  seven  classes:  Violence,  Anarch- 
ism, Laissez-faire,  Communism,  Labor-Unionism,  State 
Socialism,  the  Single  Tax. 

I.  With  the  proposal  of  energetic,  relentless  war 
against  capitalists  as  enemies  of  society  I  had  no  sym- 
pathy. But  the  violence  of  mobs  was  less  a  disease  than 
a  symptom,  and  while  lawless  violence  must  be  resisted 
by  lawful  violence,  success  in  such  resistance  would  not 
alone  solve  the  problem.  Nine  years  before  the  Hay- 
market  tragedy,  "The  Outlook"  said,  apropos  of  a  rail- 
way strike  accompanied  by  violence:  — 


402  REMINISCENCES 

Of  course  the  first  thing  is  to  put  down  the  rioters  by  vig- 
orous measures  at  whatever  cost.  But  there  will  then  still 
•  remain  a  work  of  good-will  to  be  done,  or  this  emeute,  which 
is  by  far  the  most  serious  of  its  kind  that  has  yet  occurred  in 
this  country,  will  only  be  the  precursor  of  others  of  the  same 
sort  still  more  serious.  The  military  can  only  handcuff  the 
hands  of  the  striker;  the  moralist  must  find  a  road  to  his  head 
and  his  heart,  or,  when  the  handcuffs  are  taken  off,  the  next 
strike  will  be  more  vigorous  than  ever. 

This  twofold  judgment  was  repeated  in  substance  with 
every  recurring  strike  when  accompanied  by  violence. 
Greater  emphasis  was  generally  put  upon  the  necessity 
of  finding  a  remedy  for  industrial  wrong  than  upon  the 
necessity  of  repressing  violence;  for  all  the  readers  of 
"The  Outlook"  believed  in  repressing  violence,  but 
many  of  them  had  to  be  awakened  to  the  necessity  of 
looking  for  a  remedy. 

II.  But  all  anarchists  are  not  assassins.  There  was  a 
philosophy  of  anarchism  propounded  by  some  thoughtful 
men  which  deserved  consideration,  and  therefore  sym- 
pathetic though  critical  interpretation.  To  that  philoso- 
phy I  gave  some  study,  the  results  of  which  I  embodied 
in  an  address  delivered  in  1902  before  the  Nineteenth 
Century  Club  of  New  York  on  "Anarchism."  In  this 
address  I  summed  up  the  previous  teachings  of  "The 
Outlook"  scattered  through  a  number  of  years;  I  ac- 
cepted the  definition  of  anarchism  furnished  by  one  of 
its  advocates,  E.  V.  Zenker,  "The  perfect,  unfettered 
self-government  of  the  individual,  and  consequently 
the  absence  of  any  kind  of  external  government."  This 
doctrine  the  anarchists  defended  on  philosophic  grounds 
—  the  sanctity  of  the  human  will;  on  historic  grounds  — 
the  evils  wrought  in  history  by  despotism;  on  religious 
grounds  —  Christ's  forbidding  his  disciples  to  resist 
evil.  I  pointed  out  the  fact  that  in  religion  all  Americans 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  403 

believed  in  the  perfect,  unfettered  self-government  of 
the  individual;  that  the  popular  economic  doctrine  was 
that  industry  should  be  wholly  left  to  the  perfect,  un- 
fettered self-government  of  the  individual,  subject  only 
to  natural  law  and  free  competition;  and,  still  further, 
that  those  who  believe  that  "all  just  government  rests 
upon  the  consent  of  the  governed"  could  hardly  object, 
logically,  to  the  conclusion  of  the  anarchists  that  there 
can  be  no  just  government  where  there  is  no  such  con- 
sent. This  aphorism  I  absolutely  repudiated,  a  repudia- 
tion which  brought  upon  me  a  mild  torrent  of  not  mild 
criticism.   But  what  I  said  then  I  here  repeat:  — 

Law  exists  independently  of  man's  wiU;  the  moral  law  no 
less  than  physical  law.  "We  are  under  law,  and  we  cannot 
help  ourselves.  Law  comes  neither  from  the  divine  right  of 
kings  nor  from  a  divine  right  of  democracies;  it  is  eternal,  im- 
mutable, divine;  it  proceeds,  as  Hooker  has  said,  from  the 
bosom  of  Almighty  God.  From  anarchists  who  are  assassins 
we  should  protect  society  by  whatever  penal  laws  are  neces- 
sary, but  to  philosophical  anarchism  we  should  give  a  patient 
hearing  and  answer  it  with  fair  and  honest  reason.  Journalists 
must  affirm,  instructors  teach,  ministers  preach,  the  divine, 
inviolable,  eternal  sanctity  of  law.  Legislators  must  under- 
stand that  they  cannot  make  laws,  they  can  only  discover 
them;  legislation  must  conform  to  the  eternal  laws  of  morality, 
and  the  courts  must  administer  law  for  the  purpose  of  secur- 
ing justice.  Let  legislators  legislate  for  special  classes,  protect 
the  rich  and  forget  the  poor,  estimate  the  prosperity  of  the 
nation  by  the  accumulation,  not  by  the  distribution,  of  wealth, 
and  intrench  by  legislation  an  industrial  system  with  long 
hours,  Httle  leisure,  and  small  rewards  for  the  many,  and  the 
accumulation  of  unimagined  wealth  for  the  few,  and  let  the 
courts  allow  the  rich  to  keep  the  poor  waiting  till  their 
patience  and  their  purses  are  alike  exhausted,  crimes  go  un- 
punished until  they  are  forgotten,  and  the  petty  gambler  be 
arrested  but  the  rich  and  prosperous  one  go  free — and  anarch- 
ism will  demand  the  abohtion  of  all  law  because  it  will  see  in 


404  REMINISCENCES 

law  only  an  instrument  of  injustice.    The  way  to  counteract 
hostility  to  law  is  to  make  laws  which  deserve  to  be  respected.  ^ 

III.  In  this  essay  I  incidentally  expressed  my  view 
of  the  current  economic  doctrine  popularly  known  as 
"Laissez-faire"  —  the  doctrine  defined  by  Adam  Smith 
in  the  following  two  sentences:  "All  systems  either  of 
preference  or  of  restraint,  therefore,  being  completely 
taken  away,  the  obvious  and  simple  system  of  natural 
liberty  establishes  itself  of  its  own  accord.  Every  man, 
as  long  as  he  does  not  violate  the  law  of  justice,  is  left 
perfectly  free  to  pursue  his  own  interest  in  his  own  way, 
and  to  bring  both  his  industry  and  capital  into  competi- 
tion with  those  of  any  other  man,  or  order  of  men." 
This  philosophy,  which  would  leave  all  industry  to  the 
operation  of  natural  laws,  I  had  repudiated  as  early  as 
1878.  "The  community,"  I  said,  "which  attempts  to 
set  aside  natural  laws  is  one  of  lunatics;  but  the  commu- 
nity which  makes  no  attempt  to  employ  and  direct 
them  is  one  of  barbarians."  And  I  warned  of  the  danger 
which  this  policy  invited.  I  said,  "There  is  growing  up 
a  plutocracy  in  the  United  States  just  as  full  of  possible 
danger  as  an  aristocracy,  and  against  it  there  will  cer- 
tainly be  raised  up  contesting  influences  by  which  it  will 
be  limited.  .  .  .  Laissez-faire  is  no  safe  pilot  for  such 
a  sea.  It  is  one  that  demands  the  profoundest  study  of 
the  profoundest  thinkers  of  America."  For  the  first  ten 
years  of  my  editorial  work,  in  dealing  with  the  industrial 
situation,  my  chief  purpose  was  to  persuade  my  readers 
that  we  cannot  safely  leave  the  industrial  situation  to 
work  itself  out,  but  that  it  must  be  worked  out  by  in- 
telligent cooperative  action;  that  the  prevailing  discon- 
tent was  deep,  widespread,  and  justified;  that  men  who 
were  working  from  ten  to  twelve  hours  a  day  to  earn 

*  Condensed  from  the  address. 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  405 

their  livelihood  could  not  be  expected  to  find  a  remedy; 
that  their  more  prosperous  and  intelligent  brethren 
must  find  it  for  them;  and  I  found  in  such  writers  as 
Professor  Francis  G.  Walker,  John  Stuart  Mill,  and 
Thomas  Arnold  abundant  authority  for  my  contention 
that  under  the  existing  industrial  system  there  is  no  real 
freedom  of  contract  and  there  is  a  practical  injustice 
which  inevitably  incites  to  envy,  jealousy,  and  hatred. 

IV.  There  were  certain  sporadic  attempts  to  find 
relief  from  the  free  competitive  system  by  the  organiza- 
tion of  communities  in  which  the  property  was  owned 
in  common  and  the  industries  were  carried  on  for  the 
benefit  of  all  the  members.  Such  communities  were  or- 
ganized in  America  at  New  Harmony,  Pennsylvania, 
Brockton  and  Oneida  in  New  York,  and  Brook  Farm 
in  Massachusetts.  More  important  than  any  of  these 
was  the  Shaker  settlement  in  New  Lebanon,  New  York. 
This  latter  settlement  I  visited,  and  I  made  some  study 
of  the  others  through  two  volumes  published  at  the 
time,  Mr.  John  H.  Noyes's  "History  of  American  So- 
cialism" and  Mr.  Charles  Nordhoff's  "The  Commu- 
nistic Societies  of  the  United  States."  These  societies 
seemed  to  me  to  contribute  as  little  toward  the  solution 
of  the  labor  problem  as  did  the  monasteries  in  the  Middle 
Ages  to  the  solution  of  the  practical  problems  of  a  grow- 
ing civilization.  They  offered  an  escape  from  the 
problem,  not  a  solution  of  it;  and  most  of  them,  I  be- 
lieve, no  longer  exist. 

V.  Labor  organization  offered  a  more  valuable  con- 
tribution to  the  solution  of  the  industrial  problem  than 
did  either  anarchism,  laissez-faire,  or  communism.  The 
capitalists  were  organized  in  great  corporations.  The 
laborer  as  an  individual  had  to  take  such  wages  and  such 
conditions  as  the  corporation  prescribed.    If  a  railway 


406  REMINISCENCES 

engineer  objected  that  his  hours  of  labor  were  too  long, 
he  was  told  to  quit;  it  was  always  easy  to  get  some  one  to 
take  his  place.  Laborers  therefore  organized  in  order  that 
they  might  deal  on  equal  terms  with  capitalists  who  were 
already  organized.  Only  thus  could  they  secure  any- 
thing like  that  freedom  of  contract  which  the  wages 
system  promised  but  did  not  secure.  I  defended,  and 
still  defend,  the  right  of  the  laborers  thus  to  unite  for 
the  promotion  of  their  common  interests.  But  I  rec- 
ognize the  fact  that  "the  trades-union  is  not  organized 
like  a  political  club,  for  purposes  of  persuasion,  nor  like 
a  literary  club,  for  purposes  of  education,  nor  like  a 
cooperative  club,  for  purposes  of  industrial  benefit;  it 
is  organized  chiefly  to  protect  its  members  against  the 
oppression  of  employers,  or  to  wrest  from  employers  a 
larger  share  of  the  profits.  It  is  founded  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  interests  of  the  employer  and  the  employed 
are  antagonistic;  and  that  combination  is  necessary  to 
protect  the  employed  from  their  employers."  A  condi- 
tion of  society  in  which  the  employers  are  leagued  to- 
gether to  keep  the  price  of  wages  down,  and  the  em- 
ployees are  leagued  together  to  force  the  price  of  wages 
up,  could  never  produce  industrial  peace  or  promote 
human  brotherhood.  It  might  ameliorate  the  absolu- 
tism of  capital,  but  it  could  do  so  only  by  maintaining  a 
condition  of  perpetual  though  suppressed  warfare.  It 
tended  to  promote  strikes  and  lockouts,  and  every  such 
conflict,  whichever  side  won,  widened  the  chasm  be- 
tween the  classes  and  increased  the  danger  of  a  bitter 
and  violent  conflict. 

VI.  The  spirit  of  socialism  as  expressed  in  the  fine 
phrase  of  James  Russell  Lowell,  "Socialism  means,  or 
wishes  to  mean,  cooperation  and  a  community  of  in- 
terest, sympathy;  the  giving  to  the  hand,  not  so  large  a 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  407 

share  as  the  brain,  but  a  larger  share  than  hitherto,  in 
the  wealth  they  must  combine  to  produce,"  is  as  old  as 
the  human  race.  With  this  spirit  I  was  in  hearty  sym- 
pathy from  my  college  days.  But  with  the  methods  of 
modern  socialism,  which  dates  from  the  early  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  I  was  not  in  sympathy.^  If 
socialism  means  that  the  present  industrial  system  is 
radically  wrong  and  needs  to  be  revolutionized,  then  I 
am  a  socialist.  If  it  means  that  the  revolution  desired 
involves  the  ownership  of  all  the  tools  and  implements 
of  organized  industries  and  their  direction  and  control 
by  the  political  organization  —  the  Nation,  the  State, 
or  the  city  —  then  I  am  not  a  socialist.  I  once  asked  an 
advocate  of  this  school  whether  in  a  socialistic  State  I 
could  own  a  piano  and  give  concerts. 

He  answered,  "Certainly;  but  the  State  would  give 
so  much  better  concerts  for  so  small  a  price  or  for  none 
at  all  that  you  could  not  make  concert-giving  profitable." 

"Might  I  own  a  wheelbarrow  and  spade  and  cultivate 
a  gSLTdtm?" 

"Certainly." 

"Could  I  employ  a  gardener?" 

"Y-e-s.  But  not  to  cultivate  vegetables  for  the 
market." 

That  this  is  not  an  extreme  but  only  a  concrete  state- 
ment of  the  practical  effects  of  political  socialism  is  made 
clear  by  my  quotations  from  socialistic  writers,  in  the 
chapter  on  "Political  Socialism,"  in  "The  Spirit  of 
Democracy."  A  single  sentence  from  one  of  the  best 
and  most  thoughtful  of  American  socialists  must  here 
suflSce  —  John  Spargo:  "The  State  has  the  right  and 
the  power  to  organize  and  control  the  economic  system." 

^  The  very  tenn  "socialist"  first  occurs  in  the  English  language  in  1837  or 
1838. 


408  REMINISCENCES 

I  am  too  much  of  an  individualist  to  accept  this  form  of 
socialism.  "It  is  not  industrial  liberty.  It  is  industrial 
servitude  to  a  new  master."  A  State  church  has  never 
given  religious  liberty;  a  State  industry  would  not  give 
industrial  liberty.  "If,"  I  said,  in  a  lecture  delivered  to 
an  audience  which  included  not  a  few  socialists,  "I  must 
have  a  boss,  I  would  rather  have  Carnegie,  the  capitalist, 
than  Croker,  the  Tammany  politician." 

Moreover,  while  I  saw  in  Christianity  and  socialism  a 
common  spirit,  I  also  saw  in  them  a  radical  difference. 
Socialism  and  Christianity  start  from  the  same  start- 
ing-point and  propose  the  same  goal.  They  agree  in  de- 
claring that  the  present  social  structure  is  radically 
wrong  and  in  proposing  to  give  humanity  an  ideal  so- 
ciety. But  their  methods  are  different.  Socialism  would 
reform  society  in  order  to  reform  the  individual.  Chris- 
tianity would  transform  the  individual  in  order  to  trans- 
form society.  I  believe  in  both.  "  Our  business  is  to  in- 
corporate Christian  principles  in  government  and  society; 
to  make  government  a  universal  service  and  society  a 
universal  brotherhood."  But  in  this  work  the  individual 
comes  first.   "Rotten  timber  cannot  make  a  sound  ship." 

VII.  One  other  reform  remains  to  be  mentioned  — 
the  Single  Tax.  When  Henry  George's  "Progress  and 
Poverty"  appeared,  the  clear  vision,  simply  philosophy, 
unflinching  courage,  and  lucid  English  of  the  author 
appealed  to  me.  Through  a  mutual  friend  I  secured 
the  presence  of  Mr.  George  at  a  private  dinner,  where 
we  three  discussed  the  industrial  problem.  The  man 
attracted  me  quite  as  much  as  the  book  which  he 
had  written.  I  do  not  undertake  here  an  exposition  of 
his  philosophy.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  with  his  funda- 
mental postulate,  that  the  air,  the  sunlight,  the  rivers, 
navigable  or  unnavigable,   the  soil  and  its  contents. 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  409 

naturally  belong  to  the  community;  that  all  property 
rights  in  these  natural  products  are  purely  artijficial, 
created  by  the  community,  I  heartily  agree.  But  I  do 
not  and  did  not  agree  with  him  that  when  the  community 
has  created  such  artificial  rights  it  has  a  right  to  abolish 
them  without  compensation.  Nor  do  I  agree  with  some 
of  his  followers  who  apparently  think  that  the  practical 
abolition  of  private  ownership  in  land  by  levying  a  tax 
equivalent  to  a  rental  of  all  land  properties  would  be  a 
panacea  for  industrial  evils.  How  I  think  the  principles 
of  Henry  George  should  be  and  are  being  applied  in 
working  out  a  new  social  order  will  appear  later.  Here 
I  may  add  that  when  he  died,  in  the  fall  of  1897,  I  was 
glad  to  join  with  Dr.  Gustav  Gottheil,  a  Jewish  rabbi. 
Dr.  Edward  McGlynn,  a  Roman  Catholic  priest,  and 
John  Sherman  Crosby,  a  radical  Socialist;  in  public 
tributes  to  Henry  George's  memory  in  what  was  one 
of  the  most  notable  memorial  services  ever  held  in 
America  in  honor  of  a  purely  private  citizen. 

How  I  found  my  way  through  these  conflicting 
schemes  of  reform  to  my  own  conclusion  —  the  one 
which  I  have  been  advocating  for  thirty  years  —  I  do 
not  know.  I  suspect  that  the  clue  was  suggested  to  me 
by  the  first  of  three  visits  which  I  made  at  different 
times  to  the  coal  mines  of  Pennsylvania.  There  was  sup- 
posed to  be  a  glut  of  coal  in  the  market.  The  men  were 
working  only  half  time,  of  course  on  half  wages;  and 
whole  wages  were  none  too  much  for  a  comfortable 
livelihood.  Of  course  there  was  discontent.  I  made  the 
acquaintance  of  a  Welsh  preacher  who  was  also  a  mine 
worker,  and  he  invited  me  home  to  dinner.  He  was  not 
angry,  but  puzzled.  He  and  his  comrades  were  thought 
intelligent  enough  to  elect  a  Governor  and  legislators 
for  the  State,  a  President  and  Congress  for  the  Nation, 


410  REMINISCENCES 

but  they  had  no  share  in  determining  what  should  be 
their  own  hours  of  labor,  or  the  wages  they  should  re- 
ceive. We  never  know,  he  said,  when  we  go  to  work  in 
the  morning  but  that  the  boss  may  tell  us  when  we 
come  out  of  the  mine  at  noon  that  there  is  no  more 
work  for  us  and  we  need  not  come  back  to-morrow. 
And  I  thought  of  Stephen  Blackpool,  in  Dickens's  "Hard 
Times,"  and  what  the  labor  problem  meant  to  him: 
"Let  'em  be.  Let  everything  be.  Let  all  sorts  alone. 
'T  is  a  muddle,  and  that's  aw." 

I  think  it  was  after  this  that  I  offered  my  first  sugges- 
tion respecting  this  muddle.  It  was  in  November,  1884. 
*'The  Outlook"  at  that  time  announced  an  enlargement 
in  the  following  year,  and  took  occasion  to  reaffirm  its 
belief  in  democracy  —  "democracy  in  religion,  in  gov- 
ernment, in  education,  in  industry,  against  hierarchy 
in  the  church,  oligarchy  in  government,  aristocracy  in 
letters,  and  plutocracy  in  society."  Prior  to  that  time 
I  had  advocated  specific  reforms  —  the  regulation  of 
tenement-houses  by  law;  the  creation  of  State  and 
Federal  Railway  Commissions,  and  the  regulation  of 
the  telegraph  and  the  railways  by  the  joint  action  of 
the  State  and  Federal  Governments;  the  control  of  all 
the  great  corporations  by  the  Government;  the  develop- 
ment of  industrial  education  in  our  public  school  sys- 
tems; the  protection  of  the  public  domain  from  foreign 
and  domestic  trespassers;  but  I  had  not  clearly  seen,  at 
least  I  had  not  clearly  stated,  to  what  ultimate  issue 
these  specific  reforms  pointed. 

The  following  year  I  gave  to  industrial  liberty  a 
more  definite  meaning.  I  expressed  the  hope  that  "the 
conflict  between  labor  and  capital  will  come  to  an  end 
in  an  epoch  in  which  the  capitalists  will  be  laborers  and 
the  laborers  will  be  capitalists;  in  which  neither  em- 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  411 

ployers  nor  government  but  industry  itself  will  control 
its  implements  of  industry,  and  will  at  once  control  and 
compensate  its  own  toil."  I  criticised  the  labor  leaders 
as  not  sufficiently  radical.  "Instead  of  seeking  for  an 
industrial  organization  which  will  make  labor  its  own 
master  and  capital  a  commodity  to  be  hired  in  the 
cheapest  market,  they  are  content  to  leave  the  present 
industrial  organization  unchanged,  and  seek  only  to 
wring  by  battle  a  little  larger  wage  out  of  the  employers, 
or  to  transfer  mastership  from  individual  capitalists  to 
a  political  machine."  And  I  argued  the  practicability, 
at  least  the  possibility,  of  this  industrial  democracy: 
"A  great  factory  in  modern  times,  I  said,  requires  on 
an  average  a  thousand  dollars  capital  for  every  work- 
ingman  employed;  if  there  are  a  thousand  workmen 
there  are  needed  a  million  dollars.  ...  If  we  can  bring 
about  a  state  of  society  in  which  every  workingman  can 
have  a  thousand  dollars  invested  in  his  work,  working- 
men  will  be  their  own  capitalists  and  their  own  masters, 
and  the  present  industrial  difficulty  growing  out  of 
chronic  and  suppressed  conflict  between  laborers  and 
capitalists  will  be  at  an  end."  In  such  an  organization 
the  workers  would  own  their  tools  and  implements, 
would  control  the  mill  or  factory,  and  would  divide 
among  themselves  the  profits  and  the  losses  of  the 
enterprise." 

While  urging  this  as  the  ultimate  goal  of  all  industrial 
reform,  I  opposed  as  vigorously  as  I  knew  how  some  of 
the  more  dangerous  of  the  panaceas  described  above  — 
labor  war,  anarchism,  state  socialism  —  and  advocated 
with  equal  earnestness  specffic  industrial  reforms: 
shorter  hours,  better  wages,  sanitary  legislation,  pro- 
hibition of  child  labor,  restriction  of  woman's  labor,  and 
the  like.    On  three  reforms  I  laid  special  emphasis. 


412  REMINISCENCES 

partly  because  I  believe  they  led  surely  but  gradually 
and  indirectly  in  the  direction  of  industrial  democracy. 
These  reforms  were  postal  savings,  industrial  education, 
and  legal  recognition  of  labor  unions. 

In  one  of  my  tours  of  investigation  through  the  min- 
ing region  of  Pennsylvania  I  found  between  Philadel- 
phia and  Wilkes-Barre  but  one  savings  bank.  One 
beneficent  mine  operator,  lamenting  this  fact,  told  me 
that  for  a  time  his  company  took  the  savings  of  the  men 
and  allowed  them  interest.  But  when  hard  times  came 
on  and  the  company  had  diflBculty  in  securing  the  money 
necessary  to  continue  their  business,  the  workingmen 
came  clamoring  for  their  savings,  and  the  company  de- 
cided that  it  would  never  repeat  the  experiment.  It 
<  was  right.  It  is  not  well  for  the  workingman  to  depend 
both  for  his  wages  and  his  savings  on  the  one  corpora- 
tion. I  began  then  an  agitation  in  "The  Outlook,"  con- 
tinued for  over  twenty  years,  for  a  postal  savings  bank, 
urging  that  the  workingman  should  find  it  as  easy  to 
put  his  money  at  interest  as  to  post  a  letter.  My  dream 
of  twenty  years  ago  has  now  come  true.  The  deposits 
made  in  the  postal  savings  bank  indicate  that  the  will 
to  save  is  not  lacking;  and  this  indication  is  confirmed 
by  the  reports  from  the  private  savings  banks :  — 

It  is  reported  by  the  Comptroller  of  the  Currency  that  there 
were  in  1909  nearly  nine  million  depositors  in  the  savings  banks 
of  the  United  States,  who  owned  therein  $3,713,405,709.  A 
considerable  proportion  of  these  depositors  are  wage-earners, 
yet  they  belong  to  the  creditor  class.  They  are  capitalists 
loaning  their  capital  through  the  savings  banks  to  the  managers 
of  great  enterprises.  When  the  great  enterprises  are  so 
honestly  managed  that  stock  in  the  enterprise  is  as  safe  as  a 
deposit  in  the  savings  bank,  many  of  these  savings-bank  de- 
positors will  become  shareholders  in  the  enterprise  which,  by 
their  work,  they  are  carrying  on. 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  413 

To  be  a  capitalist  the  workingman  must  not  only 
have  money  and  the  facilities  for  keeping  it,  he  must 
have  an  educated  intelligence.  Under  the  wages  system 
the  capitalists  or  employing  class  had  no  interest  and 
not  much  inclination  to  furnish  the  means  to  their  em- 
ployees to  acquire  this  intelligence.  Children  were  set 
to  work  at  nine  or  ten  years  of  age.  Their  fathers  and 
often  their  mothers  worked  ten  to  fourteen  hours  a  day. 
The  schools  were  purely  academic  and  almost  purely 
literary.  They  made  bookkeepers  and  clerks  and  type- 
writers, but  not  mechanics.  They  were  not  schools  for 
the  miners  and  the  factory  hands;  if  the  children  of  the 
miners  and  the  factory  hands  sometimes  attended  them, 
it  was  only  that  they  might  escape  as  speedily  as  possi- 
ble from  the  serfdom  of  their  fathers.  If  the  low-priced, 
unintelligent  labor  of  America  ran  short,  it  was  always 
possible  to  import  low-priced,  unintelligent  labor  from 
abroad.  The  immigration  laws  have  done  something  to 
shut  off  that  foreign  supply;  the  child  labor  laws,  the 
first  one  of  which  was  enacted  by  Rhode  Island  in  1853, 
have  done  something  to  shut  off  the  domestic  supply; 
and  industrial  and  vocational  education  is  doing  some- 
thing to  prepare  the  working  classes  to  be  their  own 
masters  and  the  managers  of  their  own  industry.  Said 
Abraham  Lincoln,  in  1859 :  — 

As  the  Author  of  man  makes  every  mdividual  with  one 
head  and  one  pair  of  hands,  it  was  probably  intended  that 
heads  and  hands  should  cooperate  as  friends,  and  that  that 
particular  head  should  direct  and  control  that  pair  of  hands. 

It  took  over  fifty  years  for  the  country  to  grasp  the  full 
significance  of  this  pithy  saying.  In  fact,  we  have  not 
yet  fully  grasped  it. 

In  1885  I  wrote  in  "The  Outlook":  — 


414  REMINISCENCES 

The  lack  of  industrial  or  manual  training  in  our  schools  is  a 
capital  defect.  .  .  .  Knowledge  of  the  more  common  tools  and 
of  the  ways  of  using  them;  of  the  elementary  mechanical 
operations;  of  the  common  ways  of  manipulating  wood,  and 
perhaps  iron  —  this  can  be  imparted  to  boys  in  our  schools 
from  fourteen  to  sixteen  years  of  age,  at  no  great  expense,  and 
with  the  greatest  advantage  to  the  boys  themselves  and  to 
society  at  large. 

Private  philanthropy  had  at  that  time  begun  to  grapple 
with  this  problem.  There  was  an  Industrial  Education 
Society  in  Boston  and  there  were  similar  societies  in  New 
York  and  other  cities.  But  while  these  charitable  enter- 
prises "ought,"  I  said,  "  to  be  fully  equipped  and  heartily 
supported,"  their  chief  value  I  believed  would  be  "to 
furnish  a  demonstration  of  the  values  of  such  training 
and  to  point  out  the  defects  to  be  mended  in  our  sys- 
tems of  public  education."  That  was  thirty  years  ago. 
The  latest  report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education 
in  Washington  shows  industrial  and  vocational  schools 
maintained  by  the  State  in  all  but  one  of  the  States  of 
the  Union.  These  schools  cover  every  variety  of  trade 
and  industry  —  agriculture,  commerce,  mining,  and 
manufactures.  They  are  in  addition  to  endowed  schools, 
and  to  schools  established  by  private  industries,  such  as 
the  Standard  Oil  Company,  which  not  only  furnishes 
education  for  certain  of  its  employees  in  evening  schools 
at  the  expense  of  the  company,  but  which  also  provides 
training  for  work  in  the  Far  East  and  pays  the  students 
a  moderate  salary  while  they  are  getting  this  education. 
This  movement,  so  widespread  that  it  may  be  called 
universal,  has  the  support  both  of  chambers  of  commerce 
and  of  labor  unions;  and  in  many  cases  the  industrial 
schools  and  the  private  industry  cooperate,  so  that  the 
student  gets  in  the  mine  or  in  the  factory  practical  ex- 
perience, and  in  the  schools  instruction  in  the  principles 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  415 

of  his  chosen  industry.  This  marks  a  great  change  since 
Abraham  Lincoln  characterized  a  prevalent  theory  of 
his  time:  "A  blind  horse  upon  a  treadmill  is  a  perfect 
illustration  of  what  a  laborer  should  be  —  all  the  better 
for  being  blind  that  he  could  not  kick  understand- 
ingly." 

The  country  little  realizes  how  much  it  owes  to 
Samuel  C.  Armstrong,  H.  B.  Frissell,  and  Booker  T. 
Washington  for  the  impulse  they  have  given  to  all 
industrial  education  by  what  they  have  done  to  promote 
it  in  the  negro  race,  both  through  the  object-lessons 
afforded  at  Hampton  and  Tuskegee  and  by  the  addresses 
in  support  of  vocational  education  which  they  have 
given  in  almost  every  part  of  the  United  States.  An 
occasional  reactionary  capitalist  still  opposes  industrial 
education,  fearing  that  it  will  unfit  the  laboring  classes 
for  their  allotted  station,  and  an  occasional  labor  leader 
opposes  it  because  he  is  obsessed  with  the  idea  that  in- 
dustrial education  is  inferior  to  literary  education. 
Nevertheless,  the  conviction  that  the  object  of  educa- 
tion is  preparation  for  life,  and  that  the  object  of  life 
is  service  for  others,  and  therefore  all  education  should 
fit  for  service,  is  steadily  making  its  way  into  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  American  people. 

1  have  steadfastly,  continuously,  and  without  hesita- 
tion, by  pen  and  voice,  maintained  that  it  is  the  right 
of  workingmen  to  organize  and  that  it  is  generally  wise 
for  them  to  do  so,  and  have  frequently  said  that  if  I 
were  a  workingman  I  should  belong  to  my  trade  union. 
He  who  in  his  youth  advocated  the  emancipation  of 
slave  laborers  could  not  do  otherwise  than  maintain 
the  liberties  of  so-called  free  laborers.  Neither  the  folly 
of  some  of  their  leaders  nor  the  criminal  acts  of  others 
have  ever  caused  me  a  moment's  doubt  as  to  the  rights 


416  REMINISCENCES 

of  the  men  whom  they  misrepresented.  I  have  lived  to 
see  those  rights  first  denied  by  law  and  all  labor  organi- 
zations forbidden  as  conspiracy;  then  gradually  and 
grudgingly  conceded;  then  carefully  defined;  then  de- 
fended and  safeguarded.  And  I  have  seen  this  change 
in  the  laws  accompanied,  and  in  large  measure  caused, 
by  a  similar  change  in  public  opinion.  What  I  could  do 
I  have  done  to  promote  that  change;  I  wish  that  I  could 
have  done  more.  Not  until  after  the  emancipation  of 
the  slaves  both  by  Great  Britain  and  by  the  United 
States  did  English  law  recognize  the  right  of  working- 
men  to  form  combinations  for  the  protection  and  pro- 
motion of  their  rights.  About  1875  the  British  Parlia- 
ment enacted  a  well-considered  scheme  of  legislation 
defining  that  right,  legalizing  strikes  and  picketing  if 
unaccompanied  by  violence,  and  at  the  same  time  pro- 
hibiting public  disorder  and  willful  injury  to  property. 

During  his  second  term  President  Roosevelt  called 
a  very  interesting  conference  at  the  White  House.  It 
included  two  or  three  important  labor  leaders,  a  labor 
lawyer,  two  Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  some 
other  gentlemen  representing  different  social  and  in- 
dustrial interests.  I  and  two  of  my  sons  were  there  as 
representatives  of  journalism.  In  this  conference  one 
of  the  labor  leaders,  asked  by  Mr.  Roosevelt  what  the 
labor  organizations  wanted,  replied:  A  clear  definition 
of  the  legal  rights  of  labor,  that  they  may  know  what 
those  rights  are.  This  seems  to  me  a  reasonable  request, 
and  the  action  of  Great  Britain  affords  a  good  example 
for  America  to  follow.  To  some  extent  it  has  done  so. 
Most  of  the  courts  of  this  country  have  interpreted  the 
rights  of  the  workingmen  substantially  in  accord  with 
the  essential  principles  of  the  English  legislation  of  1875. 
Two  special  acts  of  legislation  are  worthy  of  note  in  this 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  417 

connection.  The  laws  enacted  by  several  of  our  States, 
following  European  example,  entitling  the  workingman 
to  receive,  as  a  matter  of  course,  compensation  for  ac- 
cidents suffered  in  the  course  of  his  employment,  are 
based  on  the  idea  that  the  employer  owes  to  his  employee 
some  other  financial  duty  than  that  of  merely  promptly 
paying  his  wage;  and  the  act  of  Congress  exempting 
labor  organizations  from  the  operation  of  the  Sherman 
Anti-Trust  Law  is  in  itself  a  distinct  repudiation  of  the 
theory  that  labor  is  a  commodity  which  the  employee 
sells  to  his  employer. 

Two  striking  events  in  the  last  four  or  five  years  fur- 
ther indicate  this  change  in  public  sentiment:  — 

The  Federal  Council  of  Churches,  in  which  all  the 
leading  Protestant  evangelical  churches  of  the  United 
States  are  included,  formally  affirmed  in  1914  their 
belief  that  Christianity  involves  a  social  as  well  as  a 
theological  creed,  and  gave  utterance  to  such  a  creed.  It 
includes  a  living  wage  for  workingmen,  protection  from 
dangerous  machinery  and  perilous  occupational  diseases, 
the  abolition  of  child  labor  and  the  sweating  system,  a 
reduction  of  the  hours  of  labor  to  secure  that  leisure 
which  is  a  condition  of  the  highest  human  life,  a  suitable 
provision  for  old  age,  and,  what  is  most  important  of 
all,  "the  most  equitable  division  of  the  profits  of  industry 
that  can  ultimately  be  devised."  This  marks  a  very  wide 
departure  from  the  doctrine  that  the  employer  owes  no  / 
financial  obligation  to  the  workingman  except  the  prompt  / 
payment  of  his  wages.  If,  as  is  often  asserted,  and  I  am 
inclined  to  think  with  truth,  the  Church  represents  the 
employers  rather  than  the  workingmen,  this  social  creed 
represents  a  radical  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  em- 
ploying class. 

The  other  indication  is  afforded  by  the  organization 


418  REMINISCENCES 

of  the  National  Civic  Federation.  In  this  organization 
such  capitalistic  leaders  as  August  Belmont,  the  banker, 
and  George  W.  Perkins,  formerly  partner  of  the  late 
J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  unite  with  such  labor  leaders  as  John 
Mitchell,  formerly  head  of  the  United  Mine  Workers 
of  America,  and  Samuel  Gompers,  President  of  the 
Federation  of  Labor,  to  discuss  the  industrial  situation 
in  an  annual  convention,  always  closing  with  a  banquet 
in  which  laborers  and  capitalists  sit  down  together. 
One  of  the  most  interesting  social  gatherings  I  ever  at- 
tended was  one  held  a  few  years  ago  at  the  house  of 
Andrew  Carnegie,  growing  out  of  this  Civic  Federation, 
at  which  laborers  and  capitalists  met  socially  as  equals 
on  the  simple  ground  of  a  common  humanity.  Such 
gatherings  have  an  effect  to  promote  a  true  industrial 
democracy,  an  effect  all  the  greater  because  indirect. 

The  undefined  duty  of  the  capitalist  partner  to  give 
to  the  workingmen  a  share  in  the  profits  of  their  common 
enterprise  is  now  recognized  in  some  concerns  by  better 
wages  voluntarily  offered,  in  some  by  welfare  work 
systematically  carried  on,  in  some  by  a  bonus  at  Christ- 
mas, in  some  by  a  system  of  profit-sharing,  in  some  by 
opportunities  offered  to  the  workingman  to  become  a 
stockholder.  This  changed  attitude  of  employers  was 
expressed  recently  by  a  friend  of  mine  engaged  in  man- 
ufacturing business  by  the  sentence:  "Formerly  we 
paid  the  least  wages  we  could  and  keep  our  workingmen 
contented;  now  we  pay  the  best  wages  we  can  consist- 
ently with  conducting  successfully  a  profitable  business." 
Participation  in  administration  grows  much  more  slowly 
than  participation  in  profits.  But,  comparing  1915  with 
1885,  the  growth  is  easily  discernible  by  the  open-minded. 
Sometimes  the  employer  simply  gives  to  every  employee 
free  access  to  him  with  complaints,  and  a  real  and  patient 


AN  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  419 

consideration  of  them;  sometimes  he  invites  conference 
with  trusted  representatives  of  his  employees;  sometimes 
he  deals  of  choice  with  official  representatives  of  the 
labor  union  to  which  his  employees  belong  —  J.  Pier- 
pont  Morgan  is  reported  to  have  said,  "I  would  rather 
deal  with  one  man  than  with  ten  thousand  men";  some- 
times an  executive  administrator  is  employed  who  serves 
as  a  connecting  link  between  the  owner  of  the  property 
and  the  workingman  and  who  has  natural  sympathy 
with  both;  sometimes,  though  as  yet  very  rarely,  details 
of  administration  are  largely  left  to  a  selected  represen- 
tation of  the  employees.  But  more  important  than  any 
specific  acts  is  the  growing  spirit  of  mutual  comprehen- 
sion and  cooperation  between  employer  and  employed, 
changing  the  atmosphere  in  many  a  shop  from  one  of 
suspicion  and  hostility  to  one  of  industrial  friendship. 

In  the  next  chapter  I  shall  consider  some  of  the 
political  changes  which  have  accompanied  and  in  part 
been  produced  by  this  change  in  public  sentiment. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

A    POLITICAL   REVOLUTION 

IN  January,  1890,  a  dinner  was  tendered  in  New  York 
to  Mr.  Henry  George  on  the  occasion  of  his  departure 
for  Australia,  to  which  country  he  was  going  to  con- 
duct a  campaign  in  favor  of  free  trade  and  the  single  tax. 
From  an  address  which  I  made  at  this  dinner  I  make  here 
some  extracts,  weaving  them  together,  but  retaining,  in 
the  main,  the  phraseology  of  the  address,  which  states 
as  comprehensively  and  briefly  as  perhaps  anywhere  they 
are  stated  the  political  principles  which  certainly  for  over 
thirty  years  I  have  maintained  continuously,  and,  I 
think,  in  the  main,  consistently :  — 

We  are  believers  in  democracy.  We  believe  in  political  de- 
mocracy —  that  it  is  the  right  of  the  people  to  rule  themselves, 
not  because  they  are  always  competent  to  govern,  but  because 
they  are  more  competent  to  govern  themselves  than  any  one 
else  is  to  govern  them,  and  because  they  will  learn  more 
quickly  by  their  blunders  than  by  the  wisdom  of  any  aris- 
tocracy set  over  them.  We  believe  in  educational  democracy. 
Because  we  believe  in  the  capacity  of  the  people  for  education 
we  believe  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Republic  to  open  the  way  for 
all  her  citizens  to  all  the  education  that  is  necessary  for  a  large 
and  noble  citizenship.  We  believe  also  in  a  democracy  of 
wealth.  We  believe  in  a  commonwealth  that  really  means 
what  that  noble  word  means,  a  wealth  that  is  common.  The 
problem  of  political  economy  in  the  past  has  been  how  to  ac- 
cumulate wealth;  the  problem  in  the  future  is  how  to  distrib- 
ute wealth.  Therefore  we  believe  in  such  a  reform  in  taxation 
as  will  give  us  taxes  on  wealth,  not  on  expenditure,  and  taxes 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  421 

direct,  not  indirect.  We  believe  that  capital  and  labor  are 
partners,  and  that  it  is  the  right  of  labor  to  organize  for  their 
own  protection  and  the  enhancement  of  their  wages.  We 
believe  that  the  people  must  control  the  corporations,  not 
the  corporations  the  people,  and  that  the  great  highways  of  the 
Nation,  its  iron  and  steel  muscles,  and  the  electric  wires  of  the 
Nation,  its  nerves,  must  be  under  the  control,  if  not  under 
the  ownership,  of  the  body  politic.  We  do  not  believe  that  gov- 
ernment is  a  necessary  evil  and  the  less  we  have  of  it  the  better. 
We  have  no  wish  to  go  back  to  a  paternal  government  nor  to 
go  back  of  that  to  the  barbarism  of  individualism.  We  look 
forward  to  a  fraternal  government  in  which  the  people  shall 
have  learned  to  do  by  their  common  will  and  their  common 
industry  the  things  that  are  for  their  common  well-being.  With 
me  this  belief  is  a  religion.  I  hold  that  it  is  as  infidel  to  deny 
the  brotherhood  of  man  as  to  deny  the  Fatherhood  of  God; 
and  the  first  infidelity  is  far  more  common  in  this  coimtry  than 
the  second. 

The  reader  will  observe  that  in  this  address  I  speak, 
not  of  my  belief,  but  of  our  belief.  I  thought  it  to  be  a 
true  interpretation  of  a  growing  body  of  progressive  dem- 
ocrats; and  as  the  speech  was  continually  punctuated 
with  applause,  and  as  at  the  end  three  hearty  cheers  were 
called  for  by  one  of  the  guests  and  were  heartily  given,  my 
opinion  was  confirmed  that,  in  stating  my  own  beliefs,  I 
was  interpreting  the  beliefs  of  others.  Whatever  service 
I  have  rendered  to  either  the  Church  or  the  State  by  my 
utterances  has  been  due,  not  to  the  fact  that  they  were 
original  and  idiosyncratic,  but  to  the  fact  that  they  in- 
terpreted to  others,  in  definite  form,  opinions  which  they 
already  held,  but  generally  uncrystallized  and  unformu- 
lated. These  principles  have  prevented  me  from  belong- 
ing to  any  party,  and  have  made  it  difficult  sometimes  for 
perfectly  honest-minded  critics  to  classify  me.  I  have 
believed  in  anti-saloon  legislation  but  have  not  been  a 
Prohibitionist,  in  social  reform  but  have  not  been  a  So- 


422  REMINISCENCES 

cialist,  in  individual  liberty  but  have  not  been  a  Demo- 
crat, in  a  strong  centralized  government  but  have  not 
been  a  Republican,  in  political  progress  and  social  jus- 
tice but  have  not  been  a  Progressive.  One  exception  to 
this  statement  is  necessary:  during  the  Civil  War  I  was  a 
Republican  and  probably  always  voted  a  straight  Re- 
publican ticket,  but  when  the  war  closed  I  left  the  party 
because  of  its  reconstruction  policy,  and  from  that  time 
on  have  been  politically  an  independent.^ 

I  should  like  to  write  a  political  history  of  the  United 
States  since  1876,  when  I  began  writing  it  from  week  to 
week  in  the  pages  of  "The  Outlook."  But  I  have  not  the 
leisure  nor  the  temperament  fitted  for  accurate  historical 
research.  All  I  can  do  here  is  to  show  how  the  principles 
defined  in  the  Henry  George  dinner  have  been  applied  by 
me  in  the  interpretation  of  some  of  the  more  important 
events  during  that  period. 

How  my  democratic  sympathies  led  me  to  take  a  part 
in  the  movement  for  the  emancipation  of  the  slave,  and 
afterwards  in  the  work  of  reconstruction,  I  have  told  in 
previous  chapters.  I  believed  that  the  negro  is  a  man, 
not  a  chattel,  and  that  he  has  an  undeveloped  capacity 
for  self-government.  But  it  was  undeveloped,  and  slav- 
ery had  done  nothing  to  develop  and  much  to  repress  this 
capacity.  It  seemed  to  me  axiomatic  that  he  who  could 
not  govern  himself  had  no  right  to  a  share  in  governing 
others,  and  that  before  he  could  govern  himself  or  others 
he  must  have  some  measure  of  education.  I  therefore 
gave  a  hearty  support  to  the  Blair  Bill,  introduced  by 
Senator  Blair  into  Congress  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
Federal  appropriations  to  public  schools  in  the  South 

'  In  order  to  vote  in  the  direct  primary  under  the  laws  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  I  enrolled  myself  as  a  Progressive,  but  I  none  the  less  count  myself  an 
independent  in  politics. 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  423 

and  such  measure  of  Federal  supervision  as  would  insure 
their  promotion  of  the  spirit  of  liberty  and  union.  "The 
Republican  party,"  I  said,  "could  inaugurate  no  wiser 
measure  than  one  appropriating  a  liberal  amount  to  be 
expended  in  promoting  a  common  school  education  in 
those  States  whose  need  is  greatest  and  whose  provision 
is  least."  This  bill  had  the  approval  of  Presidents  Grant, 
Hayes,  and  Garfield,  but  was  defeated  by  a  combination 
of  those  who  did  not  believe  in  the  education  of  the  negro 
and  those  who  did  not  believe  that  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment should  deal  with  education  in  the  States.  The  re- 
sults of  universal  suffrage  without  universal  education 
I  need  not  here  recall. 

Later,  when  private  benevolence  undertook  on  a  large 
scale  the  work  which  the  Federal  Government  should 
have  undertaken,  I  heartily  approved  and  only  wished 
that  I  could  have  more  efficiently  helped.  My  younger 
brother  Edward,  on  a  visit  to  the  Capon  Springs  Hotel 
in  West  Virginia,  suggested  to  the  proprietor  that  he 
invite  a  series  of  conferences  for  a  consideration  of  the 
problem  of  education  in  the  South  both  for  the  negroes 
and  the  mountaineers,  analogous  to  the  conferences  held 
at  Lake  Mohonk  for  the  Indians.  Out  of  these  con- 
ferences grew  the  Southern  Educational  Commission,  in 
connection  with  which  annual  conferences  were  held  in 
different  Southern  centers.  Mr.  Robert  C.  Ogden,  with 
characteristic  generosity,  for  several  years  provided  a 
special  train  and  invited  a  hundred  guests  or  so  to  go 
with  him  to  these  meetings.  How  much  this  simple  ex- 
pedient did  to  interpret  the  North  to  the  South,  and,  by 
the  reports  from  his  guests  upon  their  return,  to  interpret 
the  South  to  the  North,  no  one  can  ever  know.  I  attended 
and  spoke  at  two  of  these  conferences,  making  at  the 
conference  held  at  Richmond,  Virginia,  in  1903,  the  clos- 


424  REMINISCENCES 

ing  speech.  The  opera-house  was  packed,  half  of  the 
upper  gallery  being  reserved  for  and  occupied  by  negroes 
• —  the  first  time,  it  was  said,  since  the  close  of  the  Civil 
War  that  negroes  had  ever  been  invited  to  attend  any 
such  meeting  in  the  South.  From  a  Southern  report  of 
my  address  I  quote  two  sentences:  "Manhood  suffrage 
means  manhood  first  and  suffrage  afterwards.  ...  A 
thousand  times  nothing  is  still  nothing,  and  if  the  individ- 
ual man  cannot  govern  himself,  then  a  thousand  men  who 
cannot  govern  themselves  as  individuals  fail  to  make  a 
self-governing  community." 

For  this  speech  I  was  denounced  in  the  North  as  mean- 
ing to  nullify  all  that  had  been  gained  by  the  Civil  War, 
and  President  Cleveland  and  I  were  classed  together  as 
*'tiny  tin  weathercocks."  On  the  other  hand,  I  was  vig- 
orously commended  by  such  journals  as  the  New  York 
"Tribune,"  and  the  Atlanta  "Constitution."  To  these 
attacks  my  reply  was  a  speech  delivered  in  Boston  be- 
fore a  joint  meeting  of  the  Orthodox  and  Unitarian  Clubs, 
in  which  I  heartily  commended  the  suffrage  amendments 
to  their  State  Constitutions  adopted  by  six  of  the  South- 
ern States.  Of  these  amendments,  popularly  supposed 
in  the  North  to  be  intended  to  deprive  the  negro  of  his 
vote,  I  said:  "Any  man  can  vote,  black  or  white,  if  he 
can  read  the  English  language,  owns  three  hundred  dol- 
lars' worth  of  property,  and  pays  his  poll  tax."  The  first 
qualification  indicated  intelligence,  the  second  thrift,  the 
third  loyalty,  and  I  believed  that  it  would  have  been  well 
for  the  country  if  these  conditions  of  suffrage  had  been 
adopted  by  all  the  States  from  colonial  days. 

I  followed  this  address  by  another  at  Montclair,  New 
Jersey,  on  the  Fourth  of  July  of  the  same  year,  which  I 
devoted  to  a  discussion  of  the  race  problem.  In  this  ad- 
dress I  demanded  equality  of  legal  rights  and  industrial 


Austin  Abbott  (May,  1894') 
Benjamin  Vaughan  Abbott  (about  1888)  Edward  Abbott  (1887) 

THE  THREE  BROTHERS  OF  LYMAN  ABBOTT 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  425 

opportunity  for  both  races,  and  condemned  intermar- 
riage as  injurious  to  both  races  and  fatal  to  the  commu- 
nity, and  I  defined  the  race  question  as  follows:  How  shall 
two  races  live  peacefully  and  happily  together  in  the 
same  community,  each  preserving  its  race  purity?  It  is 
a  new  problem,  for  hitherto  the  superior  race  has  either 
destroyed  or  subjugated  or  absorbed  the  backward  race, 
and  neither  solution  is  possible  for  us.  I  may  add  that  I 
have  since  been  invited  to  speak  before  Southern  audi- 
ences on  this  theme,  and  my  message  has  always  been 
the  same;  by  so  much  as  the  white  man  is  the  superior  of 
the  black  man,  by  so  much  it  is  the  duty  of  the  white  man 
to  minister  to  the  welfare  of  the  black  man.  I  count  it  as 
one  of  the  special  honors  of  my  life  that  in  1910  I  was  in- 
vited to  speak  at  the  Semi-Centennial  of  the  State  Uni- 
versity of  Louisiana,  and  had  the  opportunity  to  give 
this  message  to  an  apparently  sympathetic  audience 
which  crowded  to  its  utmost  capacity  the  University's 
gymnasium,  converted  for  the  occasion  into  an  audience 
hall. 

The  same  fundamental  principle,  individual  liberty 
coupled  with  a  strong  government,  determined  my  course 
on  the  Indian  question.  I  have  never  visited  an  Indian 
reservation,  and  doubt  whether  I  have  practically  known 
more  than  half  a  score  of  Indians.  My  knowledge  of  the 
Indian  problem  is  derived  from  others  who  have  a  first- 
hand acquaintance  with  the  conditions,  and  such  service 
as  I  have  rendered  has  been  that  of  a  theorist  applying 
certain  general  principles  to  those  conditions  as  reported 
to  him  by  disinterested  observers. 

In  the  fall  of  1883  Mr.  Albert  K.  Smiley  invited  to  a 
summer  hotel  at  Lake  Mohonk,  on  the  Shawangunk 
Mountains,  in  New  York  State,  a  number  of  friends  of 
the  Indians  to  consider  the  Indian  question.    Mr.  Smiley 


426  REMINISCENCES 

was  a  member  of  the  Board  of  Indian  Commissioners, 
and  had  not  only  a  great  interest  in  the  Indians,  but  also 
an  expert  knowledge  of  their  situation.  That  situation 
was  substantially  this :  — 

The  country  in  colonial  days  had  necessarily  treated 
the  Indian  tribes  as  foreign  nations  and  had  made  trea- 
ties with  them.  As  late  as  1800  such  a  treaty  was  made 
granting  to  the  Indians  in  perpetuity  all  the  territory 
west  of  the  Mississippi  River.  As  civilization  moved 
westward  the  Indian  territory  had  been  diminished  in  size 
but  the  principle  was  still  maintained.  The  tribes  were 
granted  reservations  in  which  to  camp  and  hunt  and  fish. 
The  white  settlers  were  forbidden  to  enter  these  reser- 
vations except  by  special  permission  from  the  Govern- 
ment, and  the  Indians  were  forbidden  to  come  out.  They 
were  excluded  from  the  civilizing  institutions  about  them, 
and  we  wondered  that  they  were  not  civilized;  they  were 
forbidden  to  sell  the  products  of  their  industry  in  the  open 
market,  and  we  wondered  that  they  were  not  industrious; 
we  supported  them  in  their  idleness  by  rations,  and  we 
wondered  that  they  remained  paupers ;  we  assumed  that 
they  were  pagans  and  sent  missionaries  to  them,  and  we 
wondered  that  they  remained  in  paganism.  I  believed 
that  the  country  had  outgrown  this  system,  that  the  In- 
dians were  not  foreign  peoples  with  whom  we  should 
make  treaties,  but  wards  of  the  Nation  whom  the  Nation 
should  govern  for  the  purpose  of  making  them  self-gov- 
erning, and  that  "the  solution  of  the  Indian  problem  lay 
in  the  annihilation  of  the  reservation  system  root  and 
branch,  and  in  allowing  the  Indians  the  same  liberty  as  is 
allowed  to  white  men  so  long  as  they  do  not  infringe  on 
the  rights  of  their  neighbors."  Three  years  before  the 
first  Indian  Conference  was  held  I  said  editorially  of  the 
Reservation  system,  "It  is  evil  and  only  evil,  and  that 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  427 

continually;  it  is  expensive  to  Government;  harassing 
to  the  whites;  intolerable  to  the  Indians."  "To  reserve 
for  barbarism  great  territories,  and  forbid  all  advances  of 
civilization,  is  like  building  a  dungeon  in  the  midst  of 
day  and  shutting  out  the  sunlight.  It  is  time  to  have 
utterly  and  forever  done  with  it." 

In  order  to  get  this  view  before  the  conference  with 
some  chance  of  securing  for  it  a  serious  consideration,  I, 
after  the  first  session,  invited  three  or  four  influential 
members  of  the  conference  to  meet  at  the  Outlook  office 
and  discuss  the  problem  with  me.  Among  them  was 
General  S.  C.  Armstrong,  the  founder  of  Hampton  In- 
stitute, in  Virginia,  for  the  education  of  negroes  and  In- 
dians, one  of  the  bravest  and  sanest  of  reformers.  W^e 
agreed  upon  a  policy,  and  I  began  at  once  an  editorial 
agitation  for  the  abandonment  of  the  reservation  system 
as  preliminary  to  the  introduction  of  this  revolutionary 
conception  at  the  next  Lake  Mohonk  Conference.  This 
attack  upon  a  method  which  had  been  pursued  since 
colonial  days  brought,  as  I  had  hoped  it  would,  a  vigorous 
counter-attack.  The  whole  Indian  problem  was  brought 
to  the  attention  of  the  people  by  a  widespread  newspaper 
debate  in  which  Western  and  Eastern  journals  alike  par- 
ticipated. With  the  ground  thus  prepared,  I  introduced 
a  resolution  which,  in  the  absence  of  the  record,  I  must 
here  describe  from  memory  with  some  uncertainty 
whether  in  its  first  form  it  presented  fully  the  developed 
policy.  That  policy  called  upon  the  Government  to 
abolish  the  reservation  system,  break  up  the  tribal  or- 
ganizations, allot  to  the  Indians  their  lands  in  severalty, 
open  the  reservations  to  white  settlement,  allow  the  In- 
dians to  trade  in  the  open  market  and  to  sue  and  be  sued 
—  in  brief,  treat  the  foreign  aborigines  as  we  treated  the 
foreign  immigrants,  with  the  purpose  of  making  them  as 


428  REMINISCENCES 

speedily  as  possible  part  of  our  heterogeneous  Nation. 
This  programme  received  a  hearty  support,  previously 
secured,  from  some  delegates  who  possessed  a  familiarity 
with  Indian  conditions  which  I  did  not  possess;  but  it 
was  received  with  astonishment  not  unmingled  with  in- 
dignation by  others.  It  was  condemned  as  a  violation  of 
sacred  treaties  and  as  involving  robbery  by  a  great  Na- 
tion of  lands  belonging  to  a  feeble  folk.  Senator  Dawes, 
of  Massachusetts,  one  of  the  best  friends  the  Indian  ever 
had,  devoted  an  evening  to  an  eloquent  address  in  con- 
demnation of  this  policy.  Two  years  after  he  introduced 
into  the  United  States  Senate  a  bill  for  putting  the  policy 
into  effect;  it  is  known  in  history  as  the  "Dawes  Bill." 
This  action  was  taken  consequent  upon  a  resolution  by  the 
conference,  after  a  discussion  carried  on  for  two  years, 
cautiously  recommending  this  policy  for  adoption  as  soon 
as  practicable.  The  success  of  this  agitation  was  largely 
due  to  the  influence  of  two  men  —  General  Armstrong, 
the  Principal  of  Hampton  Institute,  and  Captain  Pratt, 
the  Principal  of  the  Carlisle  School  for  Indians  in  Penn- 
sylvania. The  latter,  I  remember,  in  one  speech  sug- 
gested that  if  the  country  would  put  all  the  Indians  on 
certain  special  trains  and  traverse  the  country,  dropping, 
I  think  he  said,  seven  in  each  county,  the  Indian  problem 
would  be  solved. 

Two  or  three  years  later  a  second  Indian  reform  was 
initiated  at  Lake  Mohonk,  scarcely  less  important.  The 
work  of  educating  the  Indians  had  been  carried  on  by  mis- 
sionary schools  supported  by  private  benevolence,  some- 
times in  buildings  given  by  the  Government,  sometimes 
aided  by  appropriations  from  the  Government  made  in 
proportion  to  the  number  of  pupils  educated.  When  some 
of  us  who  were  regarded  as  radicals  Introduced  a  reso- 
lution recommending  the  abolition  of  this  system  and  the 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  429 

substitution  of  one  in  which  the  public  schools  should  be 
maintained  by  the  Federal  Government  for  their  wards, 
as  public  schools  are  maintained  for  the  children  of  the 
State  by  the  State,  it  was  vigorously  opposed.  One  chief 
ground  of  opposition  was  that  the  Federal  Government 
would  never  consent  to  undertake  the  task,  an  objection 
which  disappeared  when  in  the  following  year  Dr.  Mor- 
gan, then  the  Indian  Commissioner,  came  to  Lake  Mo- 
honk  to  advocate  this  policy,  with  the  backing  of  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Interior  and  the  President.  At  first  dreaded 
by  the  missionary  societies,  I  think  it  is  now  approved 
by  all  of  them,  though  some,  of  course,  still  maintain 
church  schools  in  connection  with  their  Indian  work. 
Both  these  reforms,  the  reader  will  observe,  rested  on  the 
assumption  that  the  Indians  are  men,  possess  the  capaci- 
ties fundamental  to  manhood,  and  have  a  right  to  the 
treatment  accorded  to  other  men,  and  also  that  the  Gov- 
ernment has  a  right  and  a  duty  to  do  whatever  is  neces- 
sary for  the  welfare  of  all  those,  citizens  or  aliens, 
foreigners  or  natives,  red  men  or  white  men,  who  reside 
on  American  territory  and  are  under  the  protection  of  the 
American  fliag.  Both  reforms  have  been  initiated,  though 
they  move  toward  their  final  accomplishment  with  dis- 
heartening slowness,  partly  owing  to  the  opposition  of 
private  interests,  partly  to  the  reluctance  of  politicians 
to  abolish  political  offices  connected  with  the  Indian 
Bureau,  partly  to  the  inherent  conservatism  of  democ- 
racy and  a  popular  indifference  to  a  subject  which  to 
most  Americans  seems  to  be  one  of  minor  importance. 

For  nearly  or  quite  a  score  of  years  after  the  close  of 
the  Civil  War  the  sectional  question  still  remained  upper- 
most in  the  national  thought.  The  South,  angered  by  the 
reconstruction  policy,  was  united  to  resist  the  negro 
domination  which  it  believed  that  policy  involved.    The 


430  REMINISCENCES 

North,  still  suspicious  of  the  South,  was  united  to  prevent 
the  South  from  resuming  its  old  political  control.  Thus 
the  sectional  conflict  continued  in  politics  for  almost  a 
score  of  years  after  the  armed  conflict  had  ended.  No 
political  party  can  remain  in  power  for  a  long  period 
without  being  corrupted.  Men  who  have  no  guiding 
principles  in  life  other  than  their  own  aggrandizement 
flock  to  such  a  party.  The  second  term  of  President  Grant 
was  disgraced  by  scandals,  which,  happily  for  the  country, 
never  affected  his  personal  reputation,  and  it  was  followed 
by  a  bitter  sectional  fight  within  the  party  which  was  at 
its  hottest  in  New  York  State.  This  conflict  between  or- 
ganization and  independent  Republicans  reached  its  cli- 
max in  the  victory  of  the  organization  Republicans  in  the 
nomination  of  James  G.  Blaine  for  President  in  1884. 
At  the  same  time  Grover  Cleveland  was  nominated  by 
the  reform  forces  within  the  Democratic  party.  Mr. 
Blaine's  nomination  was  followed  by  an  unorganized  se- 
cession of  independent  voters,  some  of  them  giving  their 
vote  to  Mr.  Cleveland,  others  giving  their  vote  to  Mr.  St. 
John,  the  Prohibition  candidate,  or  absenting  themselves 
from  the  polls  altogether.  Mr.  Beecher  took  the  stump 
for  Mr.  Cleveland.    I  voted  for  St.  John. 

When  I  took  editorial  control  of  the"  Christian  Union," 
in  1882,  I  resolved  to  make  it  in  politics  independent  of 
all  party  organization,  as  in  religion  it  was  independent 
of  all  ecclesiastical  organization.  The  campaign  of  1884 
put  my  resolve  to  a  severe  test;  for  readers,  knowing  that 
Mr.  Beecher  was  supporting  the  Democratic  candidate 
and  aggrieved  at  what  they  considered  his  apostasy,  be- 
lieved that  I  would  have  followed  him  had  I  dared  to  do 
so,  and  many  of  them  resented  the  non-partisan  attitude 
which  the  paper  then  took  more  than  they  would  have 
resented   an   outspoken    advocacy   of   Mr.    Cleveland. 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  431 

The  falling  off  in  subscriptions  would  have  appalled  a 
money-making  board  of  directors,  but  my  associates 
never  for  a  moment  hesitated  in  their  loyal  support  of 
their  editor-in-chief,  never  even  suggested  to  him  that 
he  modify  his  policy. 

Two  years  before  this  campaign  I  had  published  a 
series  of  editorials  calling  for  the  organization  of  a  new 
party.  A  few  sentences  taken  from  these  editorials  will 
suffice  to  interpret  their  spirit :  — 

"A  party  without  principles  is  a  body  without  a  soul. 
Both  the  parties  are  corpses;  the  country  needs  a  live 
one."  "One  man  with  clear  convictions  and  a  clarion 
voice  could  recruit  an  army.  The  hills  are  full  of  silent 
volunteers  who  are  only  waiting  a  trumpet  call  to  battle." 
"The  new  party  will  have  at  least  three  definite  princi- 
ples," which  I  defined  as  civil  service  reform,  tariff  and 
revenue  reform,  and  "efficient  and  vigorous  control  of 
our  great  railroad  corporations."  I  insisted  that  the 
needed  reform  could  not  come  by  a  change  of  one  party  to 
the  other.  "  Sometimes  the  machine  puts  up  a  good  man, 
sometimes  a  bad  man;  but  the  good  man  does  not  sanc- 
tify the  machine  nor  the  bad  man  make  it  any  worse." 
The  real  remedy  was  to  "abolish  the  despotism  of  Ameri- 
can bosses  by  abolishing  the  prolific  mother  of  them,  the 
primary  [i.e.,  the  partisan  caucus].  ...  It  is  the  nursing 
mother  of  selfishness,  greed,  low  ambition,  petty  intrigue. 
It  is  easy  of  control  by  the  unscrupulous,  impossible  of 
control  by  the  pure  and  patriotic.  Let  it  die  the  death." 
I  did  not,  however,  suggest  a  direct  primary  to  take  its 
place. 

Reading  over  these  long  since  forgotten  editorials, 
written  in  1882, 1  am  not  surprised  that  I  was  ready  to 
welcome  the  new  party  when  it  came  in  1912,  although  I 
questioned  some  of  its  specific  remedies.    Writing  now  in 


432  REMINISCENCES 

1915,  I  am  more  than  ever  sure  that  the  reforms  which 
I  then  demanded  are  indispensable  to  the  RepubHc, 
whether  they  come  through  a  new  party  or  a  reorgan- 
ization of  the  old  parties. 

Twelve  years  subsequent  to  Mr.  Cleveland's  first  elec- 
tion William  J.  Bryan  stampeded  the  Democratic  Con- 
vention by  his  eloquence,  and  was  nominated  for  the 
Presidency  on  a  platform  demanding  the  free  coinage  of 
silver  with  gold,  the  value  of  the  two  being  fixed  at  six- 
teen to  one.  The  Republican  party  nominated  William 
McKinley  on  a  platform  declaring  for  a  single  gold  stand- 
ard. The  issue  presented  was  to  "The  Outlook"  one  of 
no  little  diflBculty.  The  editorial  staff  was  divided  in 
opinion.  Charles  B.  Spahr,  a  valued  and  important 
member  of  the  staff,  who  had  a  national  reputation  as  an 
economist,  was  a  strong  advocate  of  the  free  coinage  of 
silver.  I  myself  had  been  and,  in  theory,  stiU  am  an  in- 
ternational bimetallist;  that  is,  I  believe  that  a  double, 
or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  alternating,  standard  would 
give  a  more  stable  basis  for  currency  than  any  single 
standard,  either  gold  or  silver.  I  believed  that  the  finan- 
cial history  of  the  world  demonstrated  that  an  unvary- 
ing proportion  of  value  between  gold  and  silver  as  a  basis 
for  currency  could  be  maintained  by  international  agree- 
ment, and  in  this  belief  was  sustained  by  recognized  ex- 
pert authorities,  such,  for  example,  as  Dr.  Francis  A. 
Walker.  But  an  honest  and  earnest  endeavor  had  been 
made  by  the  Republican  party  to  secure  such  an  interna- 
tional agreement,  and  it  had  failed.  Mr.  Bryan  pro- 
posed that  America  enter  upon  the  dangerous  experiment 
of  maintaining  such  a  stable  ratio  of  values  without  the 
aid  of  other  commercial  nations.  During  my  absence 
in  Europe  "The  Outlook"  took  no  other  part  in  the 
heated  campaign  of  that  summer  than  to  report  the 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  433 

political  events  and  the  important  speeches.  I  wrote  to 
my  associates  to  prepare  for  me  a  scrap-book  contain- 
ing the  platform  of  the  two  parties  and  a  few  of  the 
most  important  speeches  on  each  side  of  the  hotly  de- 
bated question.  When  I  arrived  at  home,  about  the 
last  of  September,  I  shut  myself  up  in  my  library  and 
for  two  or  three  days  gave  to  these  arguments  a  careful 
study,  the  results  of  which  I  embodied  in  an  editorial 
in  length  equivalent  to  about  six  pages  of  "The  Out- 
look" in  its  present  size,  concluding  with  the  advice  to 
the  doubtful  voter  to  cast  his  vote  against  the  free  coin- 
age of  silver.  The  moral  reasons  for  this  conclusion 
were,  to  my  mind,  the  weightiest  reasons,  and  were 
stated  in  substantially  the  following  terms :  — 

It  is  rarely  morally  wise  to  do  to  another  what  he  thinks 
unjust.  It  is  never  morally  right  voluntarily  to  enter  on  a 
course  of  action  as  to  the  justice  of  which  the  actor  is  himself 
in  doubt.  These  principles  are  as  applicable  to  nations  as  to 
individuals.  The  creditors  of  the  American  Nation  would 
think  themselves  unjustly  dealt  with  were  we  to  pay  off  our 
bonds  in  silver  dollars.  The  Nation  itself  is  divided  in  opinion 
as  to  the  justice  of  such  action,  and  division  of  opinion  in  a 
nation  is  like  uncertainty  of  judgment  in  an  individual.  It 
ought  not  to  enter  upon  a  national  experiment  which  a  large 
proportion  of  the  people  regard  as  immoral  or  even  of  doubt- 
ful morality.  It  is  better  to  bear  the  ills  inflicted  by  what  half 
the  Nation  regards  as  the  injustice  of  a  past  generation  than  to 
attempt  their  remedy  by  a  policy  which  is  regarded  as  unjust 
by  the  other  half. 

The  issue  is  past,  and  never  likely  to  be  revived.  But 
this  episode  confirmed  me  in  my  belief  that  political 
questions  are  to  be  determined,  not  by  considerations  of 
political  or  commercial  expediency  only,  but  fundamen- 
tally by  moral  principles. 

The  next  important  incident  in  our  national  history 


434  REMINISCENCES 

greatly  interested  me,  but  in  it  I  played  only  an  unim- 
portant part. 

In  1895,  eleven  years  after  the  first  Indian  Conference 
at  Lake  Mohonk,  Mr.  Smiley  invited  to  his  hotel  a  num- 
ber of  ladies  and  gentlemen  to  discuss  the  subject  of  in- 
ternational arbitration.  Mr.  Smiley  was  a  peace-lover 
and  a  peacemaker,  but  he  was  not  an  advocate  of  peace 
at  any  price.  He  believed  that  it  is  possible  to  pay  too 
high  a  price  for  peace;  that  liberty,  justice,  the  duty  of  a 
nation  to  its  own  citizens,  the  duty  of  a  nation  to  neigh- 
boring nations,  are  each  and  all  too  great  a  sacrifice  to  offer 
for  the  sake  of  securing  either  personal  or  national  peace. 
The  series  of  conferences  at  Lake  Mohonk  which  have 
been  held  since  1895  have  not  been  peace  conferences; 
they  have  been  conferences  on  international  arbitration. 
Mr.  Smiley's  object,  frequently  affirmed  by  him  in  the 
course  of  these  conferences,  was  to  work  out  some  better 
means  of  securing  international  justice  and  fulfilling  na- 
tional duty  than  the  method  of  war.  In  the  first  con- 
ference Edward  Everett  Hale  pointed  out  in  a  speech  of 
great  clearness  and  vigor  that  better  way.  It  was  not 
international  arbitration.  It  was  a  permanent  court  for 
the  settling  of  judicial  controversies,  and  he  made  clear 
the  fundamental  distinction  between  the  two  methods. 
This  epoch-making  speech  was  delivered  four  years  be- 
fore the  First  Hague  Conference  was  held,  and  twelve 
years  before  our  Secretary  of  State,  Elihu  Root,  laid  it 
as  a  chief  duty  upon  the  American  delegation  to  the 
Second  Hague  Peace  Conference  to  propose  such  a 
tribunal. 

Six  months  after  this  first  arbitration  conference  at 
Lake  Mohonk  there  occurred  an  incident  which  tested 
the  feeling  of  the  country  on  this  subject. 

A  boundary  dispute  had  arisen  in  South  America  be- 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  435 

tween  Venezuela  and  British  Guiana.  After  long-con- 
tinued attempts  to  settle  the  dispute  by  negotiations. 
Great  Britain  broke  off  diplomatic  relations  with  Vene- 
zuela and  Venezuela  appealed  to  the  United  States  for 
sympathy  and  assistance.  President  Cleveland's  message 
in  December,  1895,  called  upon  Congress  to  provide  ade- 
quate appropriation  for  an  investigation  of  the  facts  in 
the  case.  His  recommendation  was  accompanied  by  a 
very  undiplomatic  threat  which  brought  us  near  to  the 
peril  of  war  with  Great  Britain.  "  When  the  report  of  the 
commission,"  he  said,  "is  made  and  accepted,  it  will,  in 
my  opinion,  be  the  duty  of  the  United  States  to  resist,  by 
every  means  in  its  power,  as  a  willful  aggression  upon  its 
rights  and  interests,  the  appropriation  by  Great  Britain 
of  any  lands  or  the  exercise  of  governmental  jurisdiction 
over  any  territory  which,  after  investigation,  we  have 
determined  of  right  belong  to  Venezuela." 

My  own  estimate  of  this  message  was  fairly  expressed 
by  a  sentence  attributed  to  a  leading  Senator  of  Presi- 
dent Cleveland's  party.  Senator  Gray,  of  Delaware,  that 
the  message  partook  of  the  spirit  of  a  man  who  slaps  his 
neighbor's  face  and  then  asks  him  for  an  explanation. 
Meanwhile  both  the  Senate  and  the  House  eagerly  sup- 
ported the  President,  and  the  appropriation  of  one  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  was  made  by  a  non-partisan  vote. 
But  the  country  did  not  exhibit  the  same  unanimity. 
The  message  of  the  President  was  sent  to  Congress  on  the 
17th  of  December.  On  the  following  Sunday  the  preach- 
ers of  America,  without  previous  conference  and  without 
following  any  recognized  leader,  preached  against  war 
with  Great  Britain.  There  was  scarcely  a  dissenting 
voice  from  any  pulpit,  and  by  voice  in  Plymouth  pulpit 
and  by  pen  in  "The  Outlook"  I  joined  in  this  protest. 
The  event  gave  me  the  only  experience  I  have  ever  had 


436  REMINISCENCES 

of  addressing  a  hostile  and  tumultuous  audience.  A 
meeting  in  Cooper  Union,  held  December  24,  seven  days 
after  the  President's  Message,  was  reported  by  the  New 
York  "Tribime"  under  the  following  headlines:  — 

WAR  AT  A  PEACE  MEETING 
A  RED-HOT  TIME  OF  IT  IN  COOPER  UNION 

My  recollection  of  what  was  almost  a  mob  justifies 
this  characterization.  There  were  present  a  large  num- 
ber of  rather  boisterous  Irishmen  who  were  eager  for  war 
with  England  and  who  desired  to  turn  the  peace  meet- 
ing into  a  war  meeting.  The  presiding  officer  doubted 
my  ability  to  get  a  hearing.  I  doubted  it  myself,  but 
wished  to  try  the  experiment.  The  result  of  the  experi- 
ment two  or  three  lines  from  the  "Tribune's"  report  will 
serve  to  indicate  to  the  reader:  "Lyman  Abbott  said: 
.  .  .  'There  is  more  glory  in  a  workshop  than  in  an 
armory;  glory  is  in  producing,  not  in  destroying.'  In- 
stantly he  found  that  he  had  rightly  judged  his  audience; 
namely,  that  it  was  largely  composed  of  workingmen." 

That  I  won  the  audience  and  conquered  the  opposi- 
tion is  indicated  by  the  comment  of  the  reporter  at  its 
close:  "Cheers  saluted  his  retirement."  The  popular 
demand  in  America  for  a  peaceful  settlement  coupled 
with  a  popular  demand  in  Great  Britain  equally  unani- 
mous forced  a  peaceful  adjustment  of  the  controversy. 

Three  years  later,  in  1898,  another  war  cloud  appeared 
upon  the  horizon.  For  over  a  century  America  had  seen 
with  increasing  disquiet  the  sufferings  of  the  Cuban  peo- 
ple under  an  intolerable  Spanish  despotism.  Living  them- 
selves on  the  threshold  of  the  twentieth  century,  they 
saw  their  neighbors  oppressed  under  a  government  which 
retained  the  spirit  and  methods  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury.   The  Spanish-American  War  has  been  often  attrib- 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  437 

uted  to  the  destruction  of  the  Maine,  an  American 
man-of-war,  while  on  a  peaceful  visit  to  Havana.  In 
fact,  that  destruction  took  place  February  15,  and  war  was 
not  declared  until  April  24,  more  than  two  months  later. 
The  real  occasion  of  the  war  was  the  report  of  Senator 
Proctor,  of  Vermont,  on  the  conditions  which  he  found 
existing  in  the  island;  it  aroused  in  the  country  a  storm 
of  humanitarian  indignation  which  proved  irresistible. 
This  time  I  believed  that  war  was  a  duty  and  peace  would 
have  been  a  dishonor.  On  the  13th  of  March,  over  a 
month  before  the  declaration  of  war,  I  preached  in  Ply- 
mouth Church  a  sermon  on  the  text,  "If  it  be  possible, 
as  much  as  lieth  in  you,  live  peaceably  with  all  men," 
affirming  that  "it  is  not  always  possible  and  does  not 
always  lie  in  us  to  live  peaceably  with  all  men,"  a  sermon 
which  closed  with  the  following  sentences :  — 

This  great  Nation  belongs  to  the  community  of  nations. 
When  the  time  does  come,  in  the  judgment  of  our  leaders,  who 
have  shown  themselves  wise  and  courageous  to  lead,  wise  in 
their  moderation  and  their  equipoise,  when  the  time  does 
come,  and  they  declare  that  it  is  no  longer  possible,  that  it  no 
longer  lies  in  us  to  live  at  peace,  that  this  internecine  war  in 
Cuba  must  stop,  let  all  the  people  say,  Amen. 

This  sermon  I  followed  with  two  others  on  "The 
Meaning  of  the  War"  and  on  "The  Duty  and  Destiny  of 
America."  And  I  have  never  ceased  from  that  time  to 
this  to  commend  the  action  of  our  Government  and  our 
people  in  the  Spanish-American  War.  I  repeat  here  what 
I  said  at  one  session  of  the  Lake  Mohonk  Conference:  — 

I  believe  the  proudest  chapter  in  our  history  is  that  written 
by  the  statesmanship  of  McKinley,  the  guns  of  Dewey,  and 
the  administration  of  Taft.  There  is  nothing  to  repent,  noth- 
ing to  retract;  our  duty  is  to  go  on  and  complete  the  work  al- 
ready so  well  begun.    I  do  not  defend  or  apologize  for  what  we 


438  REMINISCENCES 

have  done  in  the  PhiHppines.  I  glory  in  it.  We  must  give 
them  a  government,  not  for  our  benefit,  but  primarily  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Filipinos. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  history  of  the  world  records 
a  nobler  war.  We  captured  Cuba  and  gave  it  to  the 
Cubans,  extending  over  them  a  protectorate  which  guar- 
antees them  from  foreign  aggression  and  domestic  an- 
archy. We  captured  Porto  Rico  and  retained  it  under 
the  protection  of  our  flag,  giving  back  to  the  Porto  Ricans 
for  expenditure  in  their  own  island  all  the  taxes  collected 
from  them.  We  captured  the  Philippines,  sent  an  army 
of  teachers  to  follow  the  army  of  occupation,  and  have 
pledged  them  our  word  to  give  them  self-government  as 
fast  as  they  are  prepared  for  it.  We  asked  no  war  in- 
demnity from  Spain;  on  the  contrary,  we  paid  her  for  all 
the  public  works  which  she  had  constructed  in  the  con- 
quered Philippines.  We  fought  the  American  Revolution 
to  free  ourselves,  the  Civil  W^ar  to  free  a  people  whom 
we  had  helped  to  enslave,  the  Spanish-American  War  to 
free  a  people  to  whom  we  owed  no  other  duty  than  that 
of  a  big  nation  to  an  oppressed  neighbor. 

In  maintaining  the  right  and  duty  of  a  strong  nation 
to  use  its  strength  for  the  welfare  of  the  world  I  have 
continually  maintained  that  no  people  have  a  right  to 
ownership  of  a  land  simply  because  they  roam  over  it, 
hunting  in  its  forests  and  fishing  in  its  lakes.  For  this 
doctrine  my  faith  in  the  fundamental  principles  of  Henry 
George's  economic  philosophy  prepared  me.  In  affirming 
it,  I  declared  in  a  speech  in  Boston  that  "barbarism  has 
no  rights  which  civilization  is  bound  to  respect."  This 
was  transformed  by  a  reporter  into  the  sentence,  "Bar- 
barians have  no  rights  which  civilization  is  bound  to  re- 
spect," and  was  made  the  text  for  a  bitter  denunciatory 
address  by  a  Boston  lawyer,  who  would  have  lost  his  text 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  439 

but  saved  his  labor  if  he  had  called  me  up  on  the  tele- 
phone to  ascertain  what  1  had  said.  This  and  some  kin- 
dred experiences  have  caused  me  to  make  it  a  rule,  from 
which  I  rarely  depart,  not  to  criticise  any  public  speaker 
on  the  faith  of  a  newspaper  report  of  his  speech  without 
first  seeking  from  him  a  verification. 

My  not  very  important  connection  with  one  other  very 
important  element  in  our  national  development  must 
conclude  this  fragmentary  narrative.  From  the  preced- 
ing chapter  the  reader  will  conclude  that  in  the  conflict 
between  labor  and  capital  my  sympathy  was  with  the 
workingmen.  But  with  the  attacks  on  men  of  wealth 
because  they  were  wealthy  and  on  big  business  because 
it  was  big  I  could  have  no  sympathy.  That  I  was  able 
to  take  any  active  and  efficient  part  in  the  movement  for 
the  emancipation  of  the  workingmen  and  of  society  from 
predatory  wealth  was  due  to  the  friendship  and  active 
cooperation  of  men  of  wealth  who  were  engaged  in  big 
business:  Mr.  James  Stillman,  who  for  friendship's  sake 
had  taken  stock  in  "The  Outlook,"  and  Mr.  Lawson 
Valentine,  who  had  purchased  a  controlling  interest  in 
the  paper,  in  order  to  give  me  a  free  hand  in  its  editorial 
conduct.  My  object  was  not  to  win  a  victory  over  the 
capitalists,  nor  to  find  a  basis  for  a  compromise  between 
laborers  and  capitalists,  but  to  learn  myself  and  to  point 
out  to  others  what  are  the  essential  rights  of  both  labor- 
ers and  capitalists,  and  so  find  in  industrial  justice  the 
foundation  for  industrial  peace. 

It  did  not  take  me  long  to  see  that  there  was  real  peril 
to  our  country  in  the  power  of  wealth  exercised  by  great 
corporations,  especially  over  the  highways  of  the  Nation. 
I  accepted  as  an  accurate  statement  of  our  railway  prob- 
lem the  saying  of  Senator  Booth,  of  California,  which  I 
frequently  repeated  in  editorials  and  addresses:    "For- 


440  REMINISCENCES 

merly  our  means  of  locomotion  were  poor,  but  our  high- 
ways were  public  property;  now  our  means  of  locomotion 
are  good,  but  our  highways  are  private  property."  It 
was  not,  however,  merely  monopoly  in  transportation 
which  seemed  to  me  a  peril.  In  a  sermon,  the  date  of 
which  I  do  not  recall,  I  said  that  if  the  time  shall  ever 
come  when  a  small  body  of  men  control  our  railways,  and 
another  small  body  our  mines,  and  another  our  oil  wells, 
and  another  our  food  supply,  and  another  our  currency, 
we  shall  cease  to  be  a  free  people,  because  those  who  con- 
trol the  sources  of  our  life  control  us.  I  insisted  that 
remedy  could  never  be  found  in  an  endeavor  to  go  back 
to  free  competition,  and  I  frequently  quoted  as  an  axiom 
the  saying  of  George  Stephenson:  "Wherever  combina- 
tion is  possible  competition  is  impossible."  As  early 
as  1878  I  declared  editorially  in  favor  of  allowing  the 
great  inter-State  lines  —  the  New  York  Central,  the 
Erie,  the  Pennsylvania,  and  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  — 
to  pool  their  freights,  although  this  in  effect  "makes  the 
four  great  railroad  corporations  one  so  far  as  the  trading 
public  are  concerned."  I  agreed  with  Charles  Francis 
Adams  that  "such  a  combination  is  less  injurious  to  the 
public  than  the  ruinous  competition  which  is  the  only 
alternative."  The  brief  sentence  which  I  had  written  in 
Terre  Haute  in  1865,  "Individualism  is  the  characteris- 
tic of  simple  barbarism,  not  of  republican  civilization," 
has  ever  since  guided  me  through  all  the  mazes  of  a  com- 
plicated, always  perplexing,  and  often  heated  public 
debate. 

Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  an  individualist  of  the  old 
school,  passionately  devoted  to  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  for  that  reason  averse  to  any  increase  in  the 
powers  of  government.  Although  I  was  in  practical 
control  of   the   paper  during  our   joint  editorship,   I 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  441 

carefully  refrained  from  taking  any  editorial  position 
on  public  questions  to  which  I  thought  he  would 
object.  Still,  in  1881,  shortly  before  I  became  editor- 
in-chief,  I  suggested  Government  control  of  the  rail- 
ways. "May  it  not  be  found,"  I  said,  "that  by  relying 
upon  the  two  powers  [State  and  Federal]  a  systematic 
comprehensive  railroad  law  might  be  framed  by  the 
General  Government  which  will  be  satisfactory  to  the 
people,  and  would  reconcile  the  rival  interests  which  are 
now  on  the  verge  of  conflict."  Two  years  later,  after  the 
change  in  editorship  had  occurred,  I  suggested  the  right 
of  the  Government  to  fix  a  maximum  rate  for  both  freight 
and  passengers,  or  to  organize  a  railway  commission  with 
supervisory  and  semi-judicial  powers,  as  in  Great  Brit- 
ain. The  following  year,  that  of  the  Blaine-Cleveland 
campaign,  in  calling  for  a  new  political  party  I  proposed, 
as  one  of  its  planks,  "the  control  by  Government  of  the 
great  highways,  whether  of  communication  or  commerce, 
whether  by  wire,  rail,  or  water."  Two  years  later,  in  an 
editorial  contrasting  "the  old  democracy  and  the  new," 
I  extended  this  platform  to  include,  in  the  function  of  the 
State,  "Government  control  of  all  corporations  not  sub- 
ject to  the  law  of  competition."  In  the  following  year 
the  first  Inter-State  Commerce  Bill  was  passed  by  the 
United  States  Senate,  a  bill  which  I  interpreted  to  mean 
that  "the  people  of  the  United  States  have  decided  that 
the  railroads  of  this  country  shall  be  public  highways, 
not  private  turnpikes."  From  that  fundamental  posi- 
tion the  Nation  has  never  receded.  Since  that  time  the 
question  has  been,  not.  Shall  the  people  control  the  rail- 
ways? but.  How  shall  that  control  be  exercised?  And 
I  have  steadfastly  advocated  the  doctrine  that  not  only 
the  railways,  but  the  mines,  the  forests,  the  waterways  — 
in  short,  the  land  and  its  contents  —  must  be  brought 


442  REMINISCENCES 

under  Government  regulation,  State  or  National,  and 
that  this  regulation  must  be  extended  to  all  forms  of 
business  —  including  the  regulation  of  food,  beverages, 
and  drugs  —  as  fast  and  as  far  as  is  necessary  to  conserve 
the  public  welfare. 

Two  occasions  of  special  interest  have  been  afforded 
me  of  putting  this  fundamental  view  of  the  function  of 
government  before  the  public.  One  was  when  I  was  in- 
vited to  address  the  Legislature  of  Oklahoma.  Two 
currents  of  political  opinion  were  very  apparent  in  this 
new  State  at  that  time,  one  progressive  from  the  West, 
the  other  conservative  from  the  South.  Assuming  the 
old  Southern  view,  as  interpreted  by  the  Alabama  "Con- 
stitution," quoted  later  in  this  chapter,  that  the  function 
of  government  is  the  protection  of  property,  I  urged  that 
it  is  as  much  the  duty  of  government  to  protect  the  prop- 
erty of  the  public  as  the  property  of  the  individual,  and 
applied  this  principle  in  urging  the  State  to  preserve  for 
the  people  the  forests,  the  rivers,  and  the  water  power. 
The  other  occasion  was  furnished  when  I  was  invited  in 
1912  to  present  my  views  to  a  Senate  committee  at  Wash- 
ington. This  I  did  in  a  paper  subsequently  published 
in  "The  Outlook,"  urging  that  the  experience  of  the 
Nation  had  demonstrated  that  regulation,  not  disorgani- 
zation, of  big  business  is  desirable;  that  Congress  had 
tried  regulation  in  the  case  of  foods  and  drugs  and  had 
succeeded,  and  had  tried  disorganization  in  the  case  of 
the  Standard  Oil  Company  and  the  Tobacco  Trust  and 
had  failed. 

When,  in  1902,  at  the  commencement  of  his  second 
term  of  office,  President  Roosevelt  made  his  famous 
addresses  on  "Big  Corporations  Commonly  Called 
Trusts,"  I  was  delighted,  and  "The  Outlook"  obtained 
his  permission  to  publish  these  addresses  in  their  au- 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  443 

thorized  form.  Here  was  a  voice  to  which  the  whole 
Nation  would  listen  urging  on  the  people  that  policy  of 
government  regulation  of  great  organized  industries 
which  "The  Outlook"  had  been  urging  for  years.  And 
when  President  Roosevelt's  term  expired  and  he  was 
about  to  return  to  the  quiet  of  private  life,  I  eagerly 
welcomed  the  suggestion  of  my  son  Lawrence  that  we 
invite  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  join  our  editorial  staff  as  a  Con- 
tributing Editor.  I  have  recently  in  the  pages  of  "The 
Outlook,"  and  on  two  separate  occasions,  given  my  esti- 
mate of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  and  need  not  repeat  it  here.  It 
must  suflSce  to  say  that  during  the  five  years  of  our  as- 
sociation he  proved  himself  an  ideal  exemplar  of  the 
spirit  and  value  of  team  work,  that  he  was  a  cordial  col- 
laborator with  his  fellow-editors,  that  he  never  sought  to 
impose  upon  us  the  authority  which  his  reputation  and 
his  position  had  given  him,  that  he  was  the  friend  of  every 
one  in  the  office,  and  that  when  the  exigency  of  his  politi- 
cal life  made  him  the  leader  of  a  political  party,  so  that 
it  was  no  longer  possible  for  him  to  occupy  the  position 
of  even  a  Contributing  Editor  of  an  independent,  non- 
partisan journal,  we  all  felt  that  we  had  lost,  in  his 
withdrawal  from  the  staff,  association  with  an  honored 
friend  and  a  wise  counselor.  This  chapter  will  have 
failed  of  a  part  of  its  purpose  if  it  has  not  made  clear  to 
the  reader  that  "The  Outlook"  could  not  do  otherwise 
than  support  what  are  popularly  known  as  the  Roosevelt 
policies  without  repudiating  the  political  principles  which 
it  had  been  advocating  for  more  than  a  score  of  years. 

Mr.  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  the  English  historian,  writing  in 
1896,  declares  that  the  constitution  of  Alabama  ex- 
presses admirably  the  best  spirit  of  American  statesman- 
ship when  it  declares  that  "the  sole  and  only  legitimate 
end  of  government  is  to  protect  the  citizen  in  the  enjoy- 


444  REMINISCENCES 

ment  of  life,  liberty,  and  property,  and  when  the  govern- 
ment assumes  other  functions  it  is  usurpation  and 
oppression."  This  may  have  been  the  best  spirit  of  Ameri- 
can statesmanship  when  the  constitution  of  Alabama 
was  adopted,  but  it  is  not  the  spirit  of  the  American 
people  to-day.  The  conservative  is  quite  right  in  saying 
that  we  have  departed  from  the  traditions  of  our  fathers. 
In  my  lifetime  I  have  seen  the  American  Government 
become  a  great  builder  of  public  works,  a  great  financial 
institution,  a  great  educational  institution,  a  great  be- 
nevolent institution,  a  great  administrator  of  public  utili- 
ties, and  a  protector  of  the  rights  and  property  of  the 
public  as  well  as  of  the  rights  and  property  of  private 
individuals. 

In  1860  President  Buchanan  refused  his  assent  to  a  bill 
for  removing  obstructions  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi 
River  on  the  ground  that  the  Federal  Government  has 
no  right  to  use  Federal  moneys  except  for  distinctly  Fed- 
eral purposes.  In  1915  we  have  built  by  Government 
money  on  territory  which  we  have  purchased  from  a 
foreign  nation  an  interoceanic  canal  for  the  benefit  of  all 
the  nations  of  the  world  on  equal  terms.  In  1861  bank- 
ing was  a  purely  private  business,  under  no  Federal  con- 
trol and  often  under  little  or  no  State  control.  Every 
shopkeeper  had  a  "Bank  Note  Detector,"  issued,  I  be- 
lieve, every  fortnight,  which  he  constantly  consulted  in 
order  to  know  the  value  of  the  bills  offered  to  him  by  the 
purchaser.  We  now  have  a  Federal-guarded  currency  of 
equal  value  in  every  part  of  the  country,  and  often  taken 
at  par  in  foreign  lands.  In  my  boyhood  in  half  of  the 
Nation  there  were  no  public  schools,  and  in  the  other 
half  the  public  school  system  was  defended  on  the 
ground  that  education  is  a  cheap  way  to  protect  the 
community  from  crime.    American  law  now  tacitly  rec- 


A  POLITICAL  REVOLUTION  445 

ognizes,  what  English  law  has  explicitly  affirmed,  that 
the  children  in  the  State  are  the  children  of  the  State, 
and  to  them  the  State  owes,  not  only  protection,  but  op- 
portunity for  education.  It  is  said  that  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son doubted  the  propriety  of  a  national  post-office,  ques- 
tioning whether  it  were  not  better  to  leave  the  carriage  of 
letters  to  private  enterprise.  Now  our  post-office  is  the 
exclusive  carrier  of  our  letters,  and  is  also  a  national 
savings  bank  and  a  national  express  company.  For  the 
doctrine  that  government  must  do  nothing  but  govern 
we  have  substituted,  almost  without  knowing  it,  the 
doctrine  that  the  people  may  do  by  means  of  their  gov- 
ernment anything  which  they  can  do  better  than  it  will 
be  done  for  them  by  private  enterprise.  I  have  been  a 
sympathetic  interpreter  of  this  pacific  revolution,  and  in 
interpreting  have  done  something  to  promote  it. 

I  have  faith  in  my  fellow-men.  I  believe  in  their  hon- 
esty of  purpose  and  their  competency  of  judgment.  I 
have  seen  them  take  up  great  questions  of  national  policy, 
one  after  another,  and  decide  them  aright,  sometimes 
overriding  their  leaders  in  so  doing.  They  have  endured 
four  years  of  terrible  self-sacrifice  in  order  to  preserve  the 
Nation  intact  and  set  it  free  from  bondage;  they  have 
given  away  millions  of  acres  of  their  lands  to  foreign 
immigrants  who  promised  to  dwell  upon  and  cultivate 
them,  recognizing  the  truth  that  the  wealth  of  a  nation 
consists  not  in  its  soil  but  in  its  people;  they  have  de- 
nied themselves  the  right  to  purchase  their  goods  in  the 
cheapest  market  that  they  might  make  America  an  in- 
dustrially independent  Nation;  they  have  voted  to  pay 
the  Nation's  debts  in  gold  when,  without  breaking  the 
letter  of  their  bond,  they  could  have  saved  millions  of  dol- 
lars by  paying  them  in  silver;  they  have  taxed  themselves 
year  after  year  for  an  expensive  system  of  public  educa- 


446  REMINISCENCES 

tion,  because  they  recognize  the  value  to  the  Nation  of 
brain  power  in  its  humblest  and  lowliest  citizens;  they 
have  voted  to  carry  on  a  war  for  the  succor  of  a  feeble 
neighbor,  and  have  brushed  aside  impatiently  the  pro- 
tests alike  of  materialists,  who  argued  that  it  did  not 
pay,  and  of  timid  idealists,  who  feared  that  it  would 
convert  the  Republic  into  an  empire;  they  have  per- 
ceived the  perils  of  the  country  in  a  growing  plutocracy, 
and  have  entered  on  the  task  of  bringing  the  aristocracy 
of  wealth  under  the  control  of  the  democracy  of  indus- 
try. I  have  been  personally,  though  not  intimately,  ac- 
quainted with  eight  Presidents  —  Grant,  the  soldier; 
Hayes,  the  peacemaker;  Garfield,  the  orator;  Cleveland, 
the  administrator;  McKinley,  the  cautious;  Roosevelt, 
the  courageous;  Taft,  the  lawyer;  Wilson,  the  scholar. 
And  I  have  known  enough  of  other  men  in  public  life  — 
senators,  representatives,  governors,  mayors,  and  their 
subordinates  —  to  know  that  while  some  politicians  are 
unscrupulous  self-seekers  in  America  as  in  other  coun- 
tries, America  has  her  share  of  public  men  as  true,  as 
pure,  as  self-denying,  as  are  to  be  found  anywhere  in  the 
world.  My  faith  in  my  fellow-men  has  been  strength- 
ened by  my  lifelong  study  of  our  national  life.  The  evils 
from  which  we  have  suffered  have  been  caused  not  by  too 
great  a  trust,  but  by  too  great  a  distrust  of  the  people; 
and  I  repeat  again,  as  my  well-considered  conclusion 
from  such  life  study,  what  I  have  often  repeated  in  pub- 
lic speech:  The  remedy  for  the  ills  of  democracy  is  more 
democracy. 

The  revolution  which  I  have  seen  in  industry  and  in 
politics  could  not  have  taken  place  had  it  not  been  ac- 
companied by  a  revolution  in  religious  thought  and  life. 
To  a  description  of  that  revolution  my  next  chapter  will 
be  devoted. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

A   RELIGIOUS   REVOLUTION 

THE  view  of  the  Bible  held  by  a  large  school  of 
theologians  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century  may  be  defined  as  follows:  The  Bible 
was  dictated  by  God  to  amanuenses;  it  is  wholly  free 
from  error;  if  in  our  version  there  are  errors,  they  are 
due  to  copyists  or  translators;  the  inspiration  is  verbal, 
for  there  can  be  no  inspiration  of  ideas  or  sentiments 
except  by  means  of  words;  "as  for  thoughts  being  in- 
spired apart  from  the  words  which  give  them  expres- 
sion, you  might  as  well  talk  of  a  tune  without  notes  or 
a  sum  without  figures";  it  is  not  only  the  infallible  word 
of  God,  it  is  his  final  word  and  there  can  be  no  further 
revelation;  the  Bible  is  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and 
nothing  but  the  truth.  This  view  of  the  Bible  as  "the 
very  Word  of  God  and  consequently  without  error,'* 
though  affirmed  by  a  unanimous  vote  of  the  Presby- 
terian General  Assembly  in  1893,  was  not,  I  think, 
current  in  the  Congregational  churches  of  New  England. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  ever  regarded  the  Bible  as  an  au- 
thority on  scientific  questions,  such  as  the  geological 
processes  of  creation,  or  the  antiquity  of  man,  but  when 
I  entered  the  ministry  in  1860  I  still  held  that  it  was  an 
"authoritative  and  infallible  rule  of  religious  faith  and 
practice,"  and  so  stated  to  the  Council  in  Farmington 
which  ordained  me  to  the  ministry.  But  the  moral 
problems  which  this  view  of  the  Bible  involves  puzzled 


448  REMINISCENCES 

me  increasingly.  How  was  I  to  understand  and  inter- 
pret such  passages  as  the  miscalled  sacrifice  of  Isaac, 
God's  hardening  of  Pharaoh's  heart,  the  massacres  of 
the  Canaanites,  Elisha's  cursing  of  the  insulting  boys, 
the  imprecatory  psalms?  What  answer  should  I  make  to 
the  Biblical  arguments  for  slavery  and  polygamy?  Some 
of  the  answers  of  the  commentators  were  satisfactory. 
I  eagerly  accepted  Lange's  interpretation  of  the  mis- 
called "sacrifice  of  Isaac,"  whose  sacrifice  was  prevented 
by  the  divine  command  —  an  incident  which  put  an  end 
forever  to  human  sacrifice  in  the  Old  Testament  religion. 
I  could  see  that,  whatever  hardening  Pharaoh's  heart 
meant,  it  did  not  mean  encouraging  him  to  resist  either 
conscience  or  compassion,  for  there  was  no  indication 
that  either  conscience  or  compassion  had  the  slightest 
influence  over  him.  I  could  accept  Christ's  interpreta- 
tion of  the  permission  of  polygamy  as  a  statesman's 
concession  to  the  passions  and  prejudices  of  a  primitive 
people,  and  could  apply  the  same  principle  to  the  per- 
mission but  curtailment  and  regulation  of  slavery.  But 
the  doctrine  that  in  the  wholesale  massacre  of  the  Ca- 
naanites Israel  was  acting  as  the  executive  of  a  divine 
judgment  pronounced  against  a  hopelessly  corrupt 
people,  that  Elisha's  curse  pronounced  upon  the  in- 
sulting boys  was  a  divine  sentence  upon  "wild  and 
blasphemous  and  contemptuous  youths,"  and  that  the 
imprecatory  psalms  were  the  expression  of  a  divine 
wrath  against  the  enemies  of  the  Lord,  did  not  satisfy 
me,  and  upon  these  and  kindred  moral  difficulties  I  held 
my  judgment  in  abeyance. 

But  these  perplexities  furnished  no  reason  for  dis- 
carding a  book  which  in  spiritual  power  had  no  parallel 
in  any  literature  with  which  I  had  any  acquaintance. 
Nowhere   did  I  find  such  a  brief  and  comprehensive 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  449 

summary  of  all  moral  obligations  as  in  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments; nowhere  such  a  hymn  of  praise  to  the 
Creator  as  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis;  nowhere  such 
a  parable  of  human  frailty  and  folly  as  in  its  third 
chapter;  nowhere  such  a  vision  of  God  in  nature  as 
in  the  one  hundred  and  fourth  Psalm;  nowhere  such  a 
vision  of  God  in  human  experience  as  in  the  one 
hundred  and  third  Psalm;  nowhere  such  a  confidence  in 
God's  forgiving  love  as  in  the  fifty-fifth  chapter  of  Isaiah. 

I  continued  to  read  and  re-read  these  and  similar 
passages  in  the  Bible  which  gave  me  an  inspiring  fellow- 
ship with  men  of  vision,  and  I  left  the  others  unread  or 
studied  them  as  problems.  I  had  thought  that  I  must 
have  some  ethical  standard  by  which  to  judge  my  own 
spiritual  instincts;  in  fact,  without  knowing  it,  I  was 
using  my  own  spiritual  instincts  to  judge  the  ethical 
standard. 

Meanwhile  I  had  become  convinced  that  the  real 
issue  before  the  American  people  was  not  one  between 
theological  theories  of  inspiration.  Trinity,  atonement, 
miracles,  or  any  other,  but  between  materialism  and 
the  life  of  the  spirit :  that  the  fundamental  question  was 
whether  there  is  any  life  that  is  intangible,  inaudible, 
invisible,  which  is  operative  upon  us,  of  which  we  can 
have  knowledge  and  concerning  which  we  can  form 
judgment,  or  whether  all  our  knowledge  is  dependent 
on  the  conclusions  which  we  can  draw  from  the  world 
that  is  tangible,  audible,  visible. 

Materialism  was  a  much  more  popular  doctrine  then 
than  now.  I  studied  Forbes  Winslow,  Sir  Henry  Mauds- 
ley,  and,  in  translation,  Buchner,  and  I  rebelled  against 
their  bloodless  teaching.  I  read  Herbert  Spencer's 
"First  Principles,"  and  they  convinced  me  that  all  that 
science  could  possibly  do  was  to  show  us  a  probable  God 


450  REMINISCENCES 

and  a  probable  immortality,  if  it  could  do  so  much  as 
that.  Joseph  Cook,  who  was  a  great  figure  in  the  religious 
world  in  the  years  1874-80,  though  forgotten  now,  was 
listened  to  by  crowds  in  Tremont  Temple  while  he  en- 
deavored to  furnish  a  scientific  demonstration  of  the 
truths  of  religion.  I  procured  his  volumes  as  they  were 
published  and  read  them  with  care,  and  what  seemed  to 
me  his  failures  confirmed  me  in  the  conclusion  to  which 
Herbert  Spencer  compelled  me  —  that  I  must  choose 
between  agnosticism  and  spiritual  faith;  that  if  I  was  to 
retain  any  really  forceful  belief  in  God  and  immortality, 
or  even  in  practical  morality,  I  must  believe  in  the  trust- 
worthiness of  spiritual  experience.  I  had  made  the  life  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  the  principal  object  of  my  study  for 
five  or  six  years,  secured  for  that  study  all  the  helps  I 
could  find,  from  the  skeptical  Strauss  to  the  churchly 
and  scholarly  Elhcott,  and  the  result  was  that  Jesus 
Christ  had  become,  not  only  my  model  and  my  master, 
but  the  supreme  object  of  my  reverence.  My  faith  in 
him  and  my  faith  in  the  men  and  women  whom  I  loved 
and  admired  compelled  in  me  faith  in  the  spiritual  life. 
Whether  the  Bible  was  infallible  or  not,  whether  the 
theological  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  my  fathers  were 
true  or  not,  of  one  thing  I  was  as  sure  as  I  was  of  my 
own  existence:  that  there  is  a  real  and  trustworthy  ex- 
perience of  repentance  for  sin,  divine  forgiveness  and 
resultant  peace,  consecration  to  duty  and  communion 
with  an  Invisible  Companion.  I  had  come  to  this  as- 
surance through  my  study  of  the  life  and  character  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  to  give  that  assurance  to  others  was 
with  me  an  increasing  passion. 

Such  was,  as  I  now  picture  it  to  myself,  my  state  of 
mind  when,  in  1876,  I  joined  Mr.  Beecher  in  the  editor- 
ship of  the  "Christian  Union." 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  451 

About  this  time  I  was  asked  to  preach  at  Vassar 
College.  It  was,  I  believe,  my  first  important  pulpit 
engagement  since  settling  in  Cornwall.  With  some  hesi- 
tation I  resolved,  in  preparing  and  preaching  this  sermon, 
to  pursue  the  course  which  I  had  been  pursuing  in  my 
Cornwall  ministry  —  to  take  with  me  no  written  essay, 
but  to  go  up  to  the  college  in  time  to  study  my  congrega- 
tion, and  let  that  study  determine  for  me  what  my 
message  should  be.  I  found  opportunity  on  Saturday 
evening  to  have  some  conversation  with  teachers,  and 
I  believe  also  with  students,  and  found  reason  to  think 
that  the  processes  of  education  were  awakening,  as  they 
often  do,  a  spirit  of  inquiry,  if  not  of  skepticism,  respect- 
ing spiritual  truth.  I  chose  for  my  text,  "The  founda- 
tion of  God  standeth  sure";  and  for  my  theme,  that  the 
foundation  of  spiritual  faith  is  neither  in  the  Church 
nor  in  the  Bible,  but  in  the  spiritual  consciousness  of 
man;  that  there  are  two  worlds  in  which  we  live,  a  visi- 
ble and  an  invisible;  that  our  knowledge  of  the  visible 
world  is  derived  through  our  senses,  that  our  knowledge 
of  the  invisible  world  is  derived  through  our  experiences. 
"You  ask  me,"  I  said,  "How  do  you  know  God?  I 
answer  by  asking  you.  How  do  you  know  your  mother? 
You  have  seen  her?  I  beg  your  pardon.  You  never  saw 
your  mother.  You  have  seen  her  face  and  her  form,  but 
you  have  not  seen  her  courage,  her  fidelity,  her  patience, 
her  love,  her  self-sacrifice,  and  these  are  what  make  your 
mother."  Disregarding  the  scientific  arguments  for 
Christian  truth,  I  appealed  directly  to  human  experi- 
ence and  sought  to  find  evidences  for  Christianity  in  the 
hearts  and  consciences  of  my  hearers.  One  little  inci- 
dent indicated  that  this  appeal  at  least  compelled  at- 
tention. A  student  in  the  pew  almost  in  front  of  me 
when  I  rose  to  speak  opened  a  book,  laid  it  quietly  at  her 


452  REMINISCENCES 

side,  and  began  to  read.  If  she  had  done  this  after  I 
had  spoken  for  three  or  four  minutes,  I  should  have  been 
embarrassed;  but  it  seemed  to  me  that  she  had  not 
given  me  a  fair  chance,  and  I  resolved  to  see  if  I  could 
compel  her  attention.  I  threw  out  some  sentence  in- 
dicating that  there  was  nothing  wrong  in  doubting. 
She  looked  up  from  her  book  surprised,  then  turned  back 
to  it  again.  I  tried  another  sentence  of  similar  character. 
She  looked  up  at  me  again.  In  two  minutes  she  had 
closed  her  book  and  I  had  no  more  attentive  auditor 
throughout  the  rest  of  the  sermon.  I  do  not  know  her 
name,  but  if  she  should  ever  read  this  chapter  I  wish 
she  would  accept  my  belated  thanks  for  the  service 
which  she  unconsciously  rendered  me  in  teaching  me 
that  inattention  should  simply  spur  the  speaker  to  more 
vigorous  effort. 

The  line  of  argument  which  I  took  in  this  sermon  I 
afterwards  employed  in  a  series  of  religious  lectures  de- 
livered at  Wellesley  College  and  subsequently  published 
under  the  title,  "In  Aid  of  Faith,"  a  series  in  which  I 
brought  all  the  fundamental  doctrines  of  evangelical 
faith  to  the  test  of  life,  endeavoring  to  state  them  in 
the  terms  of  spiritual  experience.  From  that  time  to 
this  I  have  consistently  held  that,  as  the  intellectual 
judgment  is  the  final  arbiter  in  science,  so  the  spiritual 
consciousness  is  the  final  arbiter  in  religion.  But  no 
individual  may  take  his  own  consciousness  as  an  ulti- 
mate authority  in  religion,  as  no  man  takes  his  own 
observation  and  his  conclusions  thereon  as  an  ultimate 
authority  in  science.  He  must  reach  the  truth  in  the 
one  case  by  a  careful  study  of  the  observations  and  con- 
clusions of  scientifically  minded  men;  in  the  other  by  a 
not  less  careful  study  of  the  spiritual  experiences  of 
spiritually  minded  men.   The  Bible  and  the  Church  are 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  453 

valuable  to  him  as  guides  because  they  are  the  expres- 
sions of  this  spiritual  consciousness,  but  they  can  never 
serve  as  substitutes. 

In  reaching  this  conclusion  I  had  merely  imbibed  the 
growing  spirit  of  the  time  —  a  spirit  with  which  tradi- 
tionalism dealt  after  its  customary  method.  It  was  not 
content  with  argument,  it  attempted  prohibition. 

The  Union  Theological  Seminary  of  New  York  City 
was  Presbyterian  in  its  doctrine,  but  not  under  the  con- 
trol of  the  Presbyterian  Church.  It  derived  its  title 
"Union"  from  its  mediating  spirit  and  its  comprehensive 
aim.  Both  the  Old  School  and  the  New  School  theology 
were  represented  in  its  teaching.^  Dr.  Shedd  held  to  the 
old  Calvinism — that  the  whole  human  race  was  in  Adam, 
as  the  oak  is  in  the  acorn,  fell  with  him  in  his  great 
transgression,  and  lost  the  freedom  of  the  will  with  which 
it  was  at  first  endowed,  but  did  not  thereby  lose  its  moral 
responsibility.  Dr.  Hitchcock  denied  the  moral  re- 
sponsibility of  the  race  for  Adam's  sin,  and  to  him  was 
attributed  the  bon-mot,  "Adam  did  not  represent  me, 
for  I  never  voted  for  him."  Charles  A.  Briggs  was  the 
Professor  of  Hebrew  in  this  seminary.  He  was  one  of 
the  foremost  Hebrew  and  Bible  scholars  in  the  English- 
speaking  world,  and  was  a  recognized  authority  in  Con- 
fessional literature — that  is,  in  the  literature  which 
deals  with  the  historical  meaning  of  the  Presbyterian 
Confession  of  Faith.  It  was  one  of  his  serious  offenses 
that  he  was  more  familiar  with  his  Hebrew  Bible  and  his 
Westminster  Confession  than  most  of  his  accusers;  and 
he  knew  it,  and  they  knew  that  he  knew  it.  In  1890 
he  was  elected  to  the  chair  of  Biblical  Theology  in  Union 

'  "Union"  has  now  taken  on  a  new  significance.  Various  evangelical  de- 
nominations are  represented  not  only  among  its  students  but  in  its  faculty. 
It  might  without  impropriety  be  tenued  a  "Theological  University." 


454  REMINISCENCES 

Theological  Seminary,  and  in  his  inaugural  address  in 
1891  laid  down  the  principle  that  God  alone  is  the  final 
authority;  that  he  speaks  through  reason,  the  Church, 
and  the  Bible,  and  that  all  three  are  to  be  consulted  in 
the  endeavor  to  come  at  right  conclusions  respecting 
his  will.  This  putting  reason,  the  Church,  and  the  Bible 
on  approximately  an  equality,  with  a  practical  recogni- 
tion of  the  truth  that  there  are  errors  in  all  three,  was 
in  the  sight  of  the  traditionalists  in  the  Church  a  capital 
offense,  and  he  was  put  on  trial  for  heresy.  This  trial 
resulted  in  his  suspension  from  the  ministry  by  the 
General  Assembly  in  1893.  But  the  Assembly  had  no 
power  to  dismiss  him  from  his  chair  in  Union  Seminary, 
and,  though  in  1897  he  joined  the  Episcopal  com- 
munion, he  continued  to  teach  in  the  Seminary  until 
the  day  of  his  death. 

As  might  have  been  foreseen,  this  trial,  instead  of 
putting  an  end  to  the  agitation  concerning  the  authority 
of  the  Bible,  immensely  increased  it.  The  love  of  combat 
seems  to  be  almost  universal,  though  pacificists  like  to 
see  their  prize  fights  waged  with  intellectual  weapons. 
The  daily  newspapers  took  up  the  Briggs  case  and  ad- 
vertised far,  and  wide  the  dispute  between  the  doctors 
of  theology  respecting  the  relative  authority  of  reason. 
Church,  and  Bible.  Men  and  women  who  cared  very 
little  about  the  merits  of  the  question  watched  with 
eager  interest  the  sword  play  between  such  adepts  in 
theological  controversy  as  Dr.  Briggs,  of  Union,  and  Dr. 
Patton,  of  Princeton.  So  great  was  the  public  curiosity 
to  learn  what  was  this  new  view  of  the  Bible  that 
when  in  the  winter  of  1896-97  I  delivered  a  course  of 
lectures  upon  the  subject  on  Sunday  evenings  in  Plym- 
outh Church,  and  repeated  it  the  following  year  in  the 
Lowell  Institute  of  Boston,  the  lectures  were  attended  by 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  455 

crowds  which  filled  the  building  in  each  case  to  its  utmost 
capacity.^  A  little  incident  connected  with  the  Brooklyn 
series  illustrated  how  hopeless  it  is  in  America  to  prevent 
the  spread  of  an  opinion  by  ecclesiastical  decrees  con- 
cerning it.  Some  time  after  Dr.  Briggs  was  condemned 
by  the  General  Assembly  I  was  on  my  way  to  my  home 
in  Brooklyn  one  afternoon  when  a  negro  working  in  the 
yard  of  one  of  my  neighbors  made  as  if  he  wished  to  ask 
me  a  question,  and  the  following  conversation  ensued: — 

Inquirer.  They  say,  sir,  that  you  say  there  were  two 
Isaiahs.    Did  you,  sir? 

L.  A.  Yes.  Do  you  remember  Isaiah's  saying,  "Comfort 
ye,  comfort  ye  my  people.  .  .  .  Cry  unto  her,  .  .  .  that  her 
iniquity  is  pardoned;  for  she  hath  received  of  the  Lord's  hand 
double  for  all  her  sins"? 

Inquirer.   Yes,  sir. 

L.  A.  And  do  you  think  it  probable  that  he  would  have 
said  that  to  Israel  at  the  same  time  that  he  called  them  a 
people  laden  with  iniquity,  a  seed  of  evil-doers,  rulers  of 
Sodom,  and  a  people  of  Gomorrah? 

Inquirer.   No,  sir. 

L.  A.  Nor  do  I  think  so.  I  think  the  first  Isaiah  warned 
Israel  of  the  condemnation  that  was  coming  upon  them  be- 
cause of  their  sins;  and  the  second  Isaiah,  seventy  years  later, 
after  they  had  paid  the  penalty  of  their  sins  by  their  long  and 
dreary  captivity,  brought  to  them  the  message  of  pardon. 

Inquirer.   Yes,  sir;  I  see,  sir. 

I  passed  on;  but  this  brief  incident  furnished  an  added 
evidence  that  the  common  people  can  understand  the 
essential  principles  of  the  higher  criticism  if  it  is  explained 
in  simple  language,  that  they  are  interested  in  it,  and 
that  their  interest  can  not  be  extinguished  by  the  decree 
of  a  General  Assembly. 

^  They  were  subsequently  made  the  basis  of  a  volume  published  by 
Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  entitled  The  Life  and  Literature  of  the  Ancient 
Hebrews. 


456  •  REMINISCENCES 

A  similar  attempt  to  prevent  discussion  in  the  Epis- 
copal Church  produced  a  similar  result.  Two,  perhaps 
three,  clergymen  were  unfrocked  for  publicly  denying 
the  miraculous  birth  of  Jesus.  The  first  of  these  trials 
impelled  me  to  a  fresh  study  of  the  question.  The  result 
was  the  discovery  that  the  story  of  the  miraculous  birth 
appears  only  in  two  of  the  Gospels;  is  never  referred  to 
by  Jesus  Christ,  nor  by  the  Apostles  in  their  apostolic 
preaching,  nor  in  any  of  the  Epistles;  whereas  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  is  narrated  in  all  four  of  the  Gospels,  is 
foretold  by  Jesus,  is  made  the  basis  of  the  apostolic 
preaching,  and  is  woven  into  the  fabric  of  the  apostolic 
letters.  The  story  of  the  miraculous  birth  could  be 
dropped  from  the  Gospels  and  the  Gospels  would  remain 
intact.  The  story  of  the  resurrection  could  not  be  taken 
away  without  tearing  the  Gospels,  the  Book  of  Acts,  and 
the  Epistles  into  shreds.  It  was  evident,  therefore,  to 
me,  that  the  two  events  had  not  in  the  faith  of  the  primi- 
tive Church  the  same  importance,  and  that,  historical  or 
not,  the  story  of  the  miraculous  birth  is  no  essential  part 
of  the  Gospel.  The  only  result  of  the  agitation  of  this 
subject  produced  by  the  trials  for  heresy  in  the  Episco- 
pal Church  is  that  men  of  mystical  temper  are  inclined 
to  accept  the  narrative,  men  of  scientific  temper  are 
inclined  to  reject  it,  and  men  of  temper  like  my  own, 
in  which  the  mystical  and  the  scientific  combine,  are 
inclined  to  leave  the  question  undetermined  as  of  no 
serious  importance. 

Darwin's  volume  "The  Descent  of  Man,"  published 
in  1871,  had  put  before  the  world  his  conclusion  that 
man  is  descended,  or,  as  I  prefer  to  say,  ascended,  from 
a  prior  animal  race  —  a  conclusion  fatal  to  the  theological 
doctrine  of  the  fall  and  involving,  not  only  the  origin 
of  the  race  and  the  scientific  accuracy  of  the  Bible, 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  457 

but  the  origin,  reality,  and  nature  of  sin  and  of  its 
cure. 

The  current  theory  which  had  been  almost  univer- 
sally accepted  in  the  Church  for  centuries,  except  in 
some  minor  details,  may  be  briefly  stated  thus:  God  made 
man  about  six  thousand  years  ago;  made  him  innocent 
and  virtuous.  Man  broke  God's  law,  and,  as  a  result, 
his  descendants  inherited  a  depraved  nature  —  that  is, 
a  tendency  to  sin.  The  world  was  therefore  a  kind  of 
vast  reformatory,  populated  solely  by  men  and  women 
possessed  by  evil  predispositions.  To  suffer  the  penalty 
of  their  sins  and  make  pardon  and  a  mended  career  pos- 
sible Jesus  Christ  had  come  into  the  world. 

If  there  had  been  no  fall,  if  there  was  no  inherited  de- 
pravity, if  the  world  was  not  a  reformatory,  what  be- 
came of  this  whole  system  of  evangelical  doctrine?  And 
what  became  of  the  human  experience  of  which  that 
doctrine  was  an  intellectual  expression.'^  Was  sin  only 
an  imperfect  development  .^^  Was  there  no  essential  dif- 
ference between  the  rawness  of  a  growing  boy  and  the 
deliberate  wickedness  of  a  hardened  criminal.'^  Was  there 
no  common  inheritance  of  guilt  which  united  humanity 
under  a  common  condemnation?  Was  literature,  as  well 
as  theology,  all  awry?  Was  there  no  truth  in  Haw- 
thorne's affirmation:  "It  is  a  terrible  thought  that  an 
individual  wrong-doing  melts  into  the  great  mass  of 
human  crime,  and  makes  us  —  who  dreamed  only  of 
our  own  little  separate  sin  —  makes  us  guilty  of  the 
whole"?  And  was  there  no  forgiveness  of  sins?  No 
remission  of  penalty  and  no  substitute  for  penalty?  No 
recuperation  and  no  world  disease  which  called  elo- 
quently for  world  recuperation?  Was  there,  in  short,  no 
sin  but  immaturity,  and  no  redemption  but  develop- 
ment?  There  are  those  who  will  read  these  questions 


458  REMINISCENCES 

thus  naively  confessed  with  an  amused  sense  of  intel- 
lectual superiority.  But  they  are  questions  which  in 
the  decade  following  the  publication  of  "The  Descent 
of  Man"  Christian  teachers  everywhere  were  asking 
themselves  and  each  other  with  great  concern,  and  that 
concern  I  shared  with  them.  There  are  many  who  are 
still  asking  these  questions,  having  found  to  them  no 
answer. 

I  believe  that  I  am  open-minded;  my  critics  would 
say,  too  open-minded.  There  is  no  theory  which  con- 
cerns the  well-being  of  humanity  which  I  am  not  willing 
to  investigate.  When  I  was  in  college,  a  peripatetic 
lecturer  obtained  the  use  of  one  of  our  college  rooms  to 
give  a  lecture  to  prove  that  there  was  no  such  force  in 
nature  as  gravitation.  I  was  one  of  the  students  who 
went  to  hear  him.  The  same  spirit  of  curiosity  has  led 
me  to  read  all  sorts  of  teachers,  from  Mrs.  Eddy  to 
Herbert  Spencer.  The  doctrine  of  evolution,  as  ex- 
pounded by  Darwin,  I  found  accepted  by  a  steadily  in- 
creasing number  of  scientific  men.  I  recognized  that 
they  were  as  honest  as  I,  as  eager  to  learn  the  truth,  and 
much  more  intelligent  than  I  was  upon  all  scientific 
subjects.  I  set  myself  to  the  task  of  getting  a  sympa- 
thetic acquaintance  with  their  point  of  view  and  seeing 
what  was  its  bearing  on  Christian  faith.  For  the  latter 
purpose  I  went  back  of  the  Christian  creeds  to  the  Bible, 
on  which  those  creeds  were  supposed  to  be  founded. 
And  I  discovered,  to  my  surprise,  that,  whether  true  or 
not,  the  doctrine  of  the  fall  had  no  such  importance  in 
the  Bible  as  had  been  given  to  it  in  the  theologies  of  the 
Church.  It  is  mentioned  in  the  third  chapter  of  Genesis, 
and  not  again  referred  to  in  the  Old  Testament.  Neither 
historian,  poet,  philosopher,  nor  prophet  refers  to  it, 
unless  such  a  general  statement  as,  "God  hath  made 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  '459 

man  upright;  but  they  have  sought  out  many  inven- 
tions" can  be  regarded  as  such  a  reference.  Jesus  never 
alludes  to  the  fall;  nor  the  Apostles  in  their  apostolic 
preaching  nor  John  in  his  Epistles.  Paul  refers  to  it,  but 
only  incidentally  and  parenthetically.  In  the  one  chap- 
ter which  gives  with  some  fullness  his  interpretation  of 
sin — the  seventh  chapter  of  Romans — he  treats  tempta- 
tion as  a  struggle  between  the  flesh  and  the  spirit  and 
sin  as  a  victory  of  the  flesh  over  the  spirit;  a  portrayal 
which  accords  with  and  is  effectively  interpreted  by  the 
evolutionary  doctrine  that  man  is  gradually  emerging 
from  an  animal  nature  into  a  spiritual  manhood. 

I  was  not  long  in  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  animal 
man  was  developed  from  a  lower  order  of  creation.  This 
was  the  view  of  the  scientific  experts,  and  on  questions 
on  which  I  have  no  first-hand  knowledge  I  accept  the 
conclusions  of  those  who  have.  Such  scientific  objec- 
tions as  the  failure  to  discover  a  "missing  link"  I  left 
the  scientists  to  wrestle  with.  The  objection  that  evolu- 
tion could  not  be  reconciled  with  Genesis  gave  me  no 
concern,  for  I  had  long  before  decided  that  the  Bible  is 
no  authority  on  scientific  questions.  To  the  sneer,  "So 
you  think  your  ancestor  was  a  monkey,  do  you!"  I  re- 
plied, "I  would  as  soon  have  a  monkey  as  a  mud  man 
for  an  ancestor."  This  sentence,  first  uttered,  I  believe, 
in  a  commencement  address  before  the  Northwestern 
University  in  Chicago,  brought  upon  me  an  avalanche  of 
condemnation  —  but  no  reply.  In  truth,  no  reply  was 
possible.  For  the  question  whether  God  made  the  animal 
man  by  a  mechanical  process  in  an  hour  or  by  a  process  of 
growth  continuing  through  centuries  is  quite  immaterial 
to  one  who  believes  that  into  man  God  breathes  a  divine 
life.  For  a  considerable  time  I  held  that  this  inbreathing 
was  a  new  and  creative  act.   Darwin's  "The  Expression 


460  REMINISCENCES 

of  the  Emotions  in  Man  and  Animals"  did  nothing  to 
convince  me  that  spiritual  man  is  a  development  from 
unspiritual  qualities.  Drummond's  "Ascent  of  Man," 
with  its  emphasis  on  struggle  for  others  as  a  factor  in 
spiritual  development,  a  factor  of  which  Darwin  took 
little  or  no  account,  led  me  to  see  that  such  a  spiritual 
development  is  at  least  quite  probable,  and,  without 
being  dogmatic  on  that  point,  I  became  a  radical  evolu- 
tionist; by  which  I  mean  I  accepted  to  the  full  John 
Fiske's  aphorism:  "Evolution  is  God's  way  of  doing 
things." 

This  doctrine  of  evolution  not  only  tallied  with  the 
conclusions  I  had  previously  reached  respecting  the  au- 
thority of  the  Bible,  but  clarified  it.  If  evolution  is 
God's  way  of  doing  other  things,  why  not  God's  way  of 
giving  to  mankind  a  revelation  of  himself  and  his  will? 

In  a  lecture  delivered  at  a  Sunday-School  convention 
at  Chautauqua  in  1876  I  had  told  the  Sunday-School 
teachers  that  the  Bible  is  not  a  book  but  a  library;  that 
its  formation  took  over  a  thousand  years ;  that  the  books 
of  which  it  is  composed  were  written  in  different  languages, 
by  men  of  different  temperaments,  who  were  not  only 
without  conscious  cooperation,  but  lived  centuries  apart; 
and  that  in  studying  and  teaching  it  they  must  take 
account  of  the  time  in  which,  the  people  to  which,  and  the 
temperament  of  the  men  by  whom  each  book  or  teaching 
was  uttered.  My  legal  and  historical  studies  had  further 
prepared  me  for  the  view  of  the  Bible  which  now  modern 
scholarship  generally  accepts.  I  had  learned  from  my  his- 
torical studies  that  history  is  always  composed  of  preex- 
isting materials,  and  that  these  materials  are  often  woven 
by  the  writer  into  his  narrative.  It  was  not  unnatural  to 
suppose  that  the  Bible  histories  were  composed  in  the 
same  manner,  and  that  there  were  incorporated  in  them, 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  461 

along  with  documents  and  well-attested  legends,  some 
popular  tales  and  current  folk-lore.  I  had  learned  from 
Sir  Henry  Maine  that  the  origin  of  law  is  a  general 
custom;  that  custom  is  formulated  in  specific  decrees, 
imperial  or  legislative;  then  these  decrees  are  organized 
into  a  code.  My  brother  Austin,  who  was  an  eminent 
lawyer  and  also  a  successful  Bible-class  teacher,  told 
me  that  any  lawyer  reading  the  Book  of  Leviticus  would 
not  hestitate  to  declare  that  its  directions  were  regula- 
tive, not  mandatory — that  is,  they  did  not  command  the 
people  to  offer  sacrifices,  but  were  given  to  a  people  who 
were  already  offering  sacrifices,  to  define  for  them  the 
method  which  they  should  pursue.  Thus  I  was  pre- 
pared to  trace  the  development  of  the  sacrificial  system 
of  Israel  from  its  germ  to  its  consummation:  the  germ, 
the  direction  given  in  connection  with  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments—  "An  altar  of  earth  thou  shalt  make  unto 
me,  .  .  .  and  if  thou  wilt  make  me  an  altar  of  stone, 
thou  shalt  not  build  it  of  hewn  stone"  —  a  command 
which  reduced  ritual  to  the  simplest  possible  elements; 
its  consummation,  the  elaborate  Levitical  code  with  its 
provision  for  temple.  Holy  of  Holies,  elaborate  sacrificial 
ritual  —  a  code  perfected  by  the  priesthood  six  or  seven 
centuries  later,  upon  the  return  of  Israel  from  the  exile 
in  Babylon.  And  I  came,  though  only  after  several 
years  of  study,  to  my  present  understanding  of  the  Bible: 
that  it  is  not  a  book,  fallible  or  infallible,  about  religion; 
it  is  a  literature  full  of  religion  —  that  is,  of  the  gradually 
developed  experiences  of  men  who  had  some  percep- 
tion of  the  Infinite  in  nature  and  in  human  life,  which 
they  recorded  for  the  benefit  of  their  own  and  subsequent 
times.  And  it  is  valuable,  not  because  it  is  a  substitute 
for  a  living  experience  of  a  living  God,  but  because  it 
inspires  us  to  look  for  our  experience  of  God  in  our  own 


462  REMINISCENCES 

times  and  in  our  own  souls.  And  this  conclusion,  to 
which  I  had  been  brought  by  my  studies,  was  confirmed 
by  such  scholarly  theologians  as  Dr.  Samuel  Harris,  of 
Yale  University:  "Both  the  revelation  itself  and  man's 
apprehension  of  the  God  revealed  must  be  progressive, 
and,  at  any  point  of  time,  incomplete";  and  Dr.  W.New- 
ton Clarke,  of  Colgate  University:  "Revelation  was  by 
necessity  progressive,  as  all  educational  processes  must 
be."  This  doctrine  of  revelation  at  once  answered  the 
moral  objections  to  the  Bible  which  had  perplexed  me. 
If  revelation  is  incomplete  and  progressive,  it  is  easy  to 
understand  why  Joshua  should  have  thought  Jehovah 
so  righteous  a  God  that  he  could  not  forgive  sin,  and 
Isaiah  centuries  after  should  have  thought  that  he  was 
so  righteous  a  Father  that  he  could  and  would  forgive 
his  children  if  they  sincerely  repented. 

The  doctrine  that  growth,  not  manufacture,  is  God's 
way  of  doing  things  changed  also  my  conception  of 
God,  of  creation,  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  of  the  Gospel. 
The  picture  of  a  King  on  a  great  white  throne,  into 
whose  presence  I  should  come  by  and  by  when  this 
earthly  life  is  over,  disappeared,  and  in  its  place  came 
the  realization  of  a  Universal  Presence,  animating  all 
nature  as  my  spirit  animates  my  body,  and  inspiring 
all  life  as  a  father  inspires  his  children  or  a  teacher  his 
pupils.  My  little  grandchild  sat  next  me  at  the  table 
one  day,  and  said  to  me,  "Grandfather,  how  can  God  be 
in  Cornwall  and  in  Newburgh  at  the  same  time.f^"  I 
touched  him  on  the  forehead  and  said,  "Are  you  there?" 
"Yes."  I  touchedhim  on  the  shoulder,  "  Are  you  there.'' " 
"Yes."  I  touched  him  on  the  knee,  "Are  you  there?" 
*'Yes."  "That  is  the  way,"  I  replied,  "that  God  can  be 
in  Cornwall  and  in  Newburgh  at  the  same  time."  He 
considered   a  moment,   and   shyly   smiled   his   assent, 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  463 

and  I  think  had  really  got  an  idea  of  the  Universal 
Presence. 

As  I  no  longer  looked  up  to  an  imaginary  heaven  for 
an  imaginary  God,  so  I  no  longer  looked  back  to  a 
creation  completed  in  six  days  or  six  geological  epochs. 
I  saw  in  creation,  as  later  expressed  to  me  by  a  friend, 
"a  process,  not  a  product."  Every  day  is  a  creative 
day.  Every  new  flower  that  blooms  is  a  new  creation. 
Nor  did  I  any  longer  look  back  over  an  intervening 
epoch  of  eighteen  centuries  for  a  revelation  of  God  either 
in  history  or  in  human  experience.  I  saw  him  in  modern 
as  truly  as  in  ancient  history,  in  the  life  of  America  as 
truly  as  in  the  life  of  Israel.  I  saw  him  in  the  "Eternal 
Goodness"  of  Whittier  as  truly  as  in  the  One  Hundred 
and  Third  Psalm;  in  the  mother  teaching  her  child  as 
truly  as  in  Isaiah  teaching  a  nation.  And  when  I  was 
asked  what  difference  I  thought  there  was  between 
inspiration  to-day  and  inspiration  in  Bible  times,  I  re- 
plied that  I  could  not  answer.  As  I  neither  knew  how 
God  spoke  to  Abraham  nor  how  he  spoke  to  Phillips 
Brooks,  I  could  not  tell  wherein  was  the  difference  be- 
tween the  two,  or  whether  there  was  any  difference. 

My  grandchild  seemed  easily  to  understand  me,  but 
when  I  attempted  to  set  forth  this  faith  in  the  Eternal 
Presence  to  older  hearers  I  found  myself  subjected  to  every 
kind  of  misapprehension  and  criticism.  Of  these  the  most 
serious,  and  one  which,  judging  from  letters  and  newspaper 
reports  showered  upon  me  from  all  over  the  country, 
created  something  of  a  sensation,  was  the  following:  — 

I  had  preached  a  sermon  on  this  conception  of  God 
as  the  Universal  Presence  at  Wellesley  College,  where  it 
was  gratefully  received;  I  had  preached  it  at  the  Con- 
gregational Council  at  Des  Moines,  Iowa,  where  it  was 
reported  with  few  comments,  and  those  favorable.   I  re- 


464  REMINISCENCES 

peated  it  in  Appleton  Chapel,  Harvard  University,  with 
a  different  result.  I  say  I  repeated  it;  but  the  reader 
must  remember  that  I  always  spoke  extemporaneously, 
so  that  the  same  sermon  was  never  exactly  the  same  on 
any  two  occasions.  In  this  sermon  I  said  that  I  no 
longer  believed  in  a  Great  First  Cause  who  centuries  ago 
created  certain  secondary  causes  and  left  them  to  carry 
on  the  operations  of  nature,  with  such  occasional  in- 
tervention from  him  as  might  be  necessary;  I  believed  in 
One  Great  Cause  from  whom  all  forms  of  nature  and 
of  life  continuously  proceeded.  A  reporter,  who  either 
caught  the  first  part  of  this  sentence  and  carelessly  lost 
the  last  part,  or  who  deliberately  mutilated  my  utter- 
ance to  make  a  sensation,  reported  me  as  saying  that 
I  no  longer  believed  in  a  Great  First  Cause.  As  a  result 
Lyman  Abbott,  editor-in-chief  of  "The  Outlook"  and 
pastor  of  Plymouth  Church,  was  reported  throughout 
the  country,  often  with  display  headlines,  as  having  de- 
clared himself  an  atheist.  One  enterprising  book  can- 
vasser called  on  me  to  sell  me  a  complete  set  of  Robert 
Ingersoll's  books,  which  he  knew  I  should  want,  now  that 
I  had  declared  myself  Ingersoll's  disciple.  Of  course  a 
procession  of  interviewers,  in  person  and  by  letter,  applied 
to  me  for  an  explanation,  which,  of  course,  I  gave.  As  soon 
as  I  could  easily  do  so  I  printed  the  sermon  in  "The 
Outlook";  it  was  republished  in  book  form.  The  ex- 
citement died  down;  some  of  the  papers  corrected  the 
report  directly,  others  did  so  indirectly  in  their  review  of 
the  book;  and  the  chief  ejBFect  of  the  sensation  was  that 
for  a  week  a  considerable  degree  of  public  attention  was 
directed  to  the  question.  How  are  we  to  think  of  God?  — 
an  effect  wholly  good.  For  the  greatest  foe  to  spiritual 
religion  is  neither  heresy  nor  skepticism,  but  thoughtless 
indifference. 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  465 

One  other  important,  though  less  revolutionary, 
change  in  the  religious  life  was  partly  due  to  this  growing 
belief  in  evolution  as  God's  way  of  doing  things. 

In  my  boyhood  sudden  conversion  was  regarded,  not 
only  as  possible,  but  as  desirable.  He  who  had  wallowed 
through  the  slough  of  despond  and  could  give  the  day 
and  hour  when  he  entered  the  wicket  gate  was  thought 
to  have  the  most  satisfactory  experience.  I  waited 
for  eight  or  ten  years  for  such  an  experience,  and  finally 
entered  the  church  without  it.  My  wife's  admission  to 
the  church  was  questioned  —  I  have  an  impression,  de- 
layed —  because  she  had  no  definite  experience  of  con- 
version which  she  could  describe.  In  a  Baptist  church 
in  England  over  one  of  the  pews  is  a  tablet  saying  that 
in  that  pew  Spurgeon  was  converted,  and  giving  the 
date  of  the  conversion.  Religious  campaigns,  called 
revivals,  were  carried  on  for  the  purpose  of  stimulating 
such  an  experience,  and  such  revivals  were  greatly  de- 
sired, and  sometimes  by  mechanical  methods  attempted. 
It  was  one  cause  of  my  discouragement  in  Terre  Haute 
that  the  church  experienced  no  revival  during  my  pas- 
torate. Sermons  on  Paul's  dramatic  conversion  were 
frequently  preached  in  the  churches,  but  I  doubt  whether 
sermon  literature  contains  a  sermon  on  the  conversion  of 
John.  I  never  heard  of  one  on  the  experience  of  John 
the  Baptist,  of  whom  it  is  said  that  he  was  filled  with  the 
Holy  Spirit  from  his  mother's  womb. 

There  are  still  sudden  conversions,  but  they  are 
looked  upon  with  suspicion  rather  than  with  admiration. 
There  are  still  revivals,  but  their  evils  are  frankly  recog- 
nized. As  I  am  writing  this  chapter  Mr.  William  A.  Sun- 
day is  conducting  in  different  parts  of  the  country  such 
a  campaign,  and  with  the  support  of  the  churches.  I 
rather  think  the  net  result  is  an  ethical  and  spiritual 


466  REMINISCENCES 

benefit  to  the  community;  but  the  opinion  of  the  churches 
and  the  ministers  is  by  no  means  unanimous  upon  that 
question.  The  majority  of  additions  to  the  churches  in 
our  time  come  from  the  Sunday-School.  Students  of 
church  life  report  that  the  greater  number  of  additions 
are  from  young  people  under  twenty-one  years  of  age. 
Several  causes  have  contributed  to  this  change.  One 
has  been  the  imconscious  influence  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  which  never  emphasized  what  the  Puritan 
churches  called  "religious  experiences."  Another  has 
been  the  epoch-making  book  by  Horace  Bushnell  en- 
titled "Christian  Nurture,"  vigorously  assailed  at  the 
time  because  it  seemed  to  his  critics  to  substitute  a 
natural  for  a  supernatural  process  in  spiritual  experi- 
ence. But  more  important  than  either  has  been  the 
gradual  adoption  by  the  Church  of  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion in  its  application  to  the  spiritual  life — the  doctrine 
that  in  the  sympathetic  influence  of  the  Christian  home 
and  the  Christian  community  the  child  should  grow  into 
a  Christian  experience  as  naturally  as  into  intelligent 
scholarship  or  loyal  citizenship. 

I  have  described  this  change  in  my  faith  at  some 
length  because  I  believe  that  it  is  typical  of  a  change 
which  has  taken  place  in  the  theological  beliefs  and 
religious  experiences  of  many  thousands  during  the  last 
half-century.  I  now  turn  to  another  change,  scarcely 
less  radical,  in  the  religious  hfe  of  America  during  the 
past  half -century — a  change  produced  by  the  democratic 
movement  of  the  time. 

While  science  was  thus  revolutionizing  the  intellectual 
beliefs  of  the  Church,  the  democratic  movement  was 
revolutionizing  its  spirit  and  purpose. 

There  lies  before  me  a  number  of  an  English  monthly 
magazine  entitled  "Scripture  Truth,"  dated  October, 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  467 

1914,    the   organ   apparently   of   a   Second   Adventist 
school.    From  it  I  quote  the  following  paragraph: — 

"Now,"  said  I  to  the  young  man,  "you  confess  that  you 
are  a  sinner,  but  you  do  not  acknowledge  that  in  you  there 
is  absolutely  no  good  thing?  "  He  was  not  prepared  to  go  so 
far  as  to  admit  that;  and  though  I  tried  to  get  him  to  see  it 
and  confess  it,  he  would  not;  and  after  some  time  he  got  up 
rather  impatiently  and  went  away. 

This  quite  accurately  represents  the  growing  attitude 
of  educated  young  men  and  women  in  the  time  of  my 
youth.  They  were  beginning  impatiently  to  go  away 
from  churches  which  demanded  their  assent  to  this  doc- 
trine of  total  depravity.  It  was  still  in  the  creeds  of  the 
churches  and  occasionally  preached  by  ministers  whose 
devotion  to  orthodoxy  exceeded  their  tact.  I  remember 
one  case  where  a  clergyman  hopelessly  alienated  a 
young  mother  by  taking  the  occasion  of  the  christening 
of  her  first  child  to  preach  this  doctrine  that  by  nature 
"we  are  utterly  indisposed,  disabled,  and  made  opposite 
to  all  good  and  wholly  inclined  to  all  evil." 

The  half-hearted  apologies  for  this  doctrine  in  the 
pulpit  could  accomplish  nothing  in  a  community  the 
institutions  of  which,  judicial,  commercial,  political,  / 
were  all  based  on  the  assumption  that  men  are  normally 
disposed  to  good.  Questions  of  right  arising  between 
citizens  or  between  the  State  and  a  person  accused  of 
crime  were  intrusted  to  a  jury  chosen  at  haphazard  from 
the  town,  on  the  assumption  that  they  would  be  dis- 
posed to  deal  justly,  and  their  verdict  was  based  on  the 
testimony  of  witnesses  on  the  assumption  that  most  men 
are  disposed  to  tell  the  truth.  The  business  of  the  com- 
munity, from  the  sale  of  groceries  by  the  village  store  to 
transactions  running  up  into  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
dollars,  was  carried  on  upon  a  credit  system  which  as- 


468  REMINISCENCES 

sumed  that  most  men  are  disposed  to  deal  honestly. 
And  the  gravest  questions  of  pubHc  policy  in  town. 
State,  and  Nation,  often  involving  perplexing  problems 
of  right  and  wrong,  were  submitted  to  the  suffrages  of 
the  citizens,  on  the  assumption  that,  in  spite  of  preju- 
dices and  passions,  they  would,  in  the  main,  be  disposed 
to  see  the  truth  and  act  in  accordance  with  it.  Theology 
said.  You  cannot  trust  men,  they  are  wholly  disposed  to 
evil;  political  and  commercial  life  said,  You  can  trust 
men,  they  are  generally  disposed  to  truth,  honesty,  and 
justice.  And  life  proved  more  than  a  match  for  theology. 

With  this  change  came  inevitably  a  change  in  the 
popular  understanding  of  the  nature  and  causes  of  crime 
and  the  nature  and  function  of  punishment.  In  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  it  was  assumed  that  the  criminal  was  "utterly 
inclined  to  all  evil,"  and  that  society  could  be  protected 
from  him  only  by  the  deterrent  power  of  fear.  He  had 
done  society  a  wrong;  society  must  make  him  suffer  for 
it.  This  would  deter  him,  and  the  sight  of  his  suffering 
would  deter  others  from  doing  future  wrong  to  society. 
This  was  the  argument  which  justified  the  cruel  punish- 
ments of  that  age;  the  motive  that  inspired  them  was  the 
spirit  of  revenge.  It  was  euphoniously  termed  "  vindic- 
tive justice." 

The  new  penology  treats  crime  as  a  disease  to  be  cured 
rather  than  as  a  wickedness  to  be  punished,  and  it  em- 
ploys punishment  directly  as  a  means  for  the  cure  of  the 
criminal-patient,  indirectly  as  a  cure  of  the  criminal 
class  to  which  he  belongs.  For  a  sentence  inflicting  a 
punishment  supposedly  fitted  to  the  injury  done  by 
the  criminal  it  substitutes  the  indeterminate  sentence — 
the  criminal  is  sent  to  the  reformatory,  as  the  lunatic  is 
sent  to  the  asylum,  to  be  kept  in  restraint  until  cured. 
He  is  cured  when  he  has  acquired  the  ability  to  maintain 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  469 

himself  by  honest  industry  and  a  resolute  will  to  do  so. 
For  the  deterrent  power  of  fear  as  a  means  of  protecting 
society  is  substituted  the  inspiring  power  of  hope  and 
love,  an  administration  of  moral  cure  for  an  adminis- 
tration of  vindictive  justice. 

This  inadequate  definition  of  the  new  penology  must 
suffice  for  my  purpose  here,  which  is  only  to  indicate  its 
effect  on  orthodox  theology.  It  was  impossible  for  the 
community  at  the  same  time  to  abolish  torture  from 
punishment  in  this  life  and  to  believe  that  the  Father  re- 
tained it  in  the  life  to  come;  to  believe  that  crime  was 
rather  to  be  regarded  as  a  disease  to  be  cured  than  as  a 
disposition  to  all  evil  to  be  punished,  and  to  believe  that 
sin  was  a  disposition  to  all  evil  to  be  punished  rather 
than  a  disease  to  be  cured.  The  new  penology  in  the 
State  was  accompanied  by  a  new  penology  in  the 
Church.  Which  was  cause  and  which  was  effect  it  may 
be  difficult  to  determine.  Probably  both  were  effects 
due  to  the  growing  spirit  of  humanity.  The  democratic 
spirit  which  abolished  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity 
from  the  creed  abolished  also  the  doctrine  of  endless  tor- 
ment. The  change  did  not  take  place  without  a  strug- 
gle. In  the  Congregational  denomination  it  gave  rise  to 
the  Andover  controversy  and  the  American  Board  con- 
troversy. 

Andover  Seminary  was  one  of  the  two  principal 
theological  seminaries  of  New  England.  It  had  been 
formed  in  1807  by  a  union  of  different  schools  in  the 
Puritan  churches,  and  a  difference  of  theological  opin- 
ion had  therefore  always  characterized  its  teachers. 
Edwards  A.  Park,  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing,  was 
its  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology.  He  laid  emphasis 
on  the  freedom  of  the  will;  on  a  distinction  between  de- 
pravity, as  a  tendency  to  evil,  and  sin,  as  a  voluntary 


470  REMINISCENCES 

yielding  to  that  tendency;  and  on  the  universality  of  the 
atonement — that  is,  that  Christ  had  by  his  sacrifice  pro- 
vided a  way  of  salvation  adequate  for  the  salvation  of 
all  men.  These  views  he  held  in  opposition  to  the  older 
Calvinism,  which  taught  that  man  lost  his  freedom  in 
the  fall,  that  he  was  morally  culpable  for  his  tendency  to 
evil,  and  that  the  sacrifice  of  Jesus  Christ  had  provided 
only  for  the  salvation  of  those  whom  God  had  of  his 
own  good  pleasure  elected  to  save.  When  asked  why 
the  heathen  who  had  never  heard  of  Christ  were  doomed 
to  eternal  death,  Professor  Park  replied  that  they  were 
punished,  not  for  rejecting  Christ,  but  for  sins  against 
their  own  consciences. 

Most  of  his  associates  in  the  seminary  from  the  doc- 
trine that  salvation  is  provided  for  all  men  drew  the 
conclusion  that  it  would  of  necessity  be  offered  to  all 
men,  and  therefore  taught,  as  a  probable  hypothesis, 
that  Christ  would  be  offered  in  another  life  to  those  who 
had  never  heard  of  him  here.  The  issue  thus  joined 
precipitated  a  hot  controversy  throughout  the  Congrega- 
tional churches,  embittered  as  theological  controversies 
are  apt  to  be  by  personalities,  and  it  led  to  an  unsuccess- 
ful attempt  to  turn  the  advocates  of  a  future  probation 
out  of  their  chairs  on  the  ground  that  their  teaching  was  a 
violation  of  the  seminary  creed. 

It  was  about  this  time — I  think,  during  the  height  of 
the  controversy  —  that  the  National  Council  of  Congre- 
gational Churches  appointed  a  commission  of  twenty 
clergymen  to  draft  a  new  Congregational  creed.  It  should 
be  explained  to  the  non-theological  reader  that  the  Con- 
gregational churches  are  wholly  independent  of  each 
other  —  in  England  their  name  is  Independent.  Each 
church  forms  its  own  creed,  administers  its  own  disci- 
pline, and   arranges  its  own  order  of   worship.    This 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  471 

creed,  therefore,  was  not  to  be  adopted  by  the  Council, 
not  even  to  be  reported  to  the  Council;  it  was  not  a  test 
but  a  testimony  —  that  is,  not  a  standard  to  which  Con- 
gregational ministers  must  conform,  but  simply  a  state- 
ment by  certain  generally  esteemed  ministers  of  what 
they  thought  most  Congregational  ministers  believed. 
Care  was  taken  to  put  on  this  creed  commission  repre- 
sentatives of  the  different  schools  of  thought.  Some  one, 
seeing  Dr.  George  Leon  Walker  and  Lyman  Abbott 
both  upon  it,  said,  "Whatever  those  two  can  agree  upon 
we  can  certainly  all  assent  to."  In  fact,  though  Dr. 
Walker  was  a  conservative  and  I  was  a  liberal,  we  agreed 
together  from  the  start,  for  both  desired  a  creed  so  simple 
that  all  readers  could  understand  it,  so  catholic  that  all 
schools  in  the  evangelical  churches  could  accept  it,  and 
so  spiritual  that  it  would  inspire  thought,  not  restrain 
from  thinking. 

My  duties  as  a  journalist  not  less  than  my  duties  as  a 
member  of  this  commission  compelled  me  to  make  a 
new  study  of  the  whole  subject  of  the  future  life.  These 
studies  brought  me  to  some  unexpected  conclusions  and 
confirmed  some  to  which  my  previous  studies  in  the 
New  Testament  had  brought  me.  I  discovered  that, 
except  in  one  of  Christ's  parables  and  in  the  confessedly 
enigmatical  book  of  Revelation,  fire  is  throughout  the 
Bible  an  emblem  of  destruction  or  purification,  not  of 
torment;  that  the  hell  fire  of  the  New  Testament  was  a 
fire  burning  in  the  Valley  of  Gehenna,  in  which  the  offal 
of  Jerusalem  was  destroyed;  that  throughout  the  New 
Testament  this  life  is  treated  not  as  a  life  of  probation 
but  as  a  life  of  preparation,  and  that  probation  or  judg- 
ment is  postponed  to  the  life  to  come;  that  the  word 
rendered  everlasting  does  not  mean  everlasting  but  age 
long,  and  is  applied  to  objects  which  no  one  supposes 


472  REMINISCENCES 

will  literally  last  forever.  These  conclusions  I  embodied 
in  editorials  in  "The  Outlook."  It  will  be  readily  imag- 
ined that  the  Andover  doctrine  of  a  future  probation  for 
the  heathen  did  not  especially  interest  me,  for  I  had  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  there  was  no  future  torment  either 
long  or  short,  that  the  day  of  probation  was  not  on  this 
side  of  the  grave  but  on  the  other,  and  that  there  was  no 
ground  in  Scripture  for  the  belief  that  God's  mercy  for 
any  man  ended  with  his  earthly  life. 

But  I  was  not  a  Universalist.  In  1899,  after  this  con- 
troversy had  practically  ended,  I  was  invited  to  address 
a  Universalist  convention  in  Boston,  and  with  the  cordial 
approval  of  my  host  took  as  my  theme,  "Why  I  am  not  a 
Universalist."  I  told  the  convention,  in  brief,  that  if  I 
were  a  Calvinist,  I  should  be  a  Universalist;  but  I  was 
not  a  Calvinist.  I  believed  that  the  final  decision  of  every 
man's  destiny  depends  upon  himself.  I  could  not,  there- 
fore, say  with  the  Universalist  that  I  was  sure  all  men 
would  be  saved,  though  I  was  sure  that  God  wished  to 
save  all  men.  Nor  could  I  say  with  the  orthodox  that 
any  would  be  finally  lost;  I  did  not  know.  But  I  did  not 
believe  that  God  would  keep  alive  any  child  of  his  to  go 
on  in  sin  and  suffering  forever.  I  therefore  left  the  future 
in  God's  hands,  sure  of  one  thing,  and  one  thing  only, 
that  God's  mercy  endureth  forever.  I  still  leave  this  un- 
solved problem  for  the  future  to  solve.  In  these  state- 
ments I  believed,  and  still  believe,  that  I  represented, 
unofficially  and  unauthoritatively,  the  feeling  and  the 
faith  of  most  liberal  Congregationalists. 

The  discussion  of  the  new  creed  occupied  several 
months.  When  completed,  it  was  signed  by  all  except 
two  of  the  members  of  the  commission:  one  gentle- 
man declined  because  he  had  been  unable  to  attend  the 
meetings  of  the  commission;  Dr.  E.  K.  Alden  because  he 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  473 

differed  from  the  conclusions  of  his  associates.  A  creed 
was  made  which  both  believers  and  disbelievers  in  a 
future  probation  could  sign.  Dr.  Alden  was  the  secretary 
of  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign 
Missions  generally  known  by  its  initials,  as  the  "A.  B. 
C.  F.  M."  He  insisted  that  candidates  for  missionary 
appointment  should  affirm  their  belief  in  the  endless 
punishment  of  all  who  had  not  accepted  Jesus  Christ  as 
their  Saviour,  and  sent  out  from  the  rooms  of  the  board 
a  revised  Apostles'  Creed  in  which  for  the  phrase,  "I 
believe  in  the  resurrection  of  the  body  and  life  everlast- 
ing," was  substituted  the  phrase,  "I  believe  in  the  resur- 
rection of  the  dead,  the  final  separation  of  the  righteous 
and  the  wicked,  and  the  life  and  death  everlasting." 
"I  remember  his  telling  me,"  said  one  of  the  candidates, 
"that  I  should  be  as  sure  of  the  eternal  punishment  of 
the  unconverted  as  I  was  of  the  existence  of  God.  He 
assured  me  that  I  was  cutting  the  nerve  of  missions  if  I 
withdrew  fear  of  eternal  punishment,  which  he  held  to 
be  the  fate  of  all  the  forefathers  of  my  future  heathen." 
He  would  recommend  no  one  for  missionary  service  who 
did  not  hold  this  doctrine;  and  the  committee  would 
appoint  no  one  whom  their  secretary  refused  to  recom- 
mend. 

Professor  Egbert  C.  Smyth,  of  Andover,  an  advocate 
of  the  Andover  theory  of  a  future  probation  for  the 
heathen,  was  a  member  of  the  prudential  or  executive 
committee  of  the  board,  and  insisted  that  candidates 
who  held  that  view  should  not  be  debarred  from  mis- 
sionary service.  Dr.  Mark  Hopkins,  the  famous  presi- 
dent of  Williams  College,  who  was  president  of  the 
American  Board,  and  Dr.  N.  G.  Clarke,  who  was  Dr. 
Alden's  colleague  in  the  board,  though  not  accepting  the 
Andover  theory,  thought  its  acceptance  ought  not  to  be 


474  REMINISCENCES 

a  bar  to  missionary  appointment.  Miss  Alice  Freeman 
was  president  of  Wellesley  College,  two  of  whose  grad- 
uates were  refused  appointment  by  Dr.  Alden  because 
they  did  not  accept  Dr.  Alden's  theology.  I  have  never 
known  any  person  who  possessed  so  persuasive  a 
personality  as  Miss  Freeman.  She  combined  in  an  extra- 
ordinary degree  intensity  of  feeling  with  absolute  self- 
control.  I  wonder  if  that  is  not  the  real  secret  of  what 
we  call  magnetism.  Eloquent  was  her  restrained  indig- 
nation at  the  havoc  wrought  in  the  mind  of  the  college  by 
this  paralyzing  refusal  of  the  opportunity  for  missionary 
service  to  graduates  whose  spirit  of  unselfish  consecration 
was  the  admiration  of  their  college  mates.  At  first  the 
attempt  was  patiently  made  to  reach  some  adjustment 
of  the  difficulty  by  friendly  conference.  I  happened,  I 
hardly  know  why,  to  share  in  the  counsels  of  Dr.  Smyth 
and  Miss  Freeman.  My  patience  was  soon  exhausted. 
I  am,  and  always  have  been,  a  great  believer  in  the  power 
of  public  opinion.  I  proposed  to  publish  the  facts  in 
*'The  Outlook."  Dr.  Smyth  urged  me  not  to  do  so. 
Miss  Freeman  questioned  the  advisability.  But,  after  a 
considerable  delay  and  no  progress,  both  consented  that 
I  should  follow  my  own  judgment,  and  on  the  17th  of 
December,  1885,  I  published  an  editorial  entitled  "A 
Cautionary  Signal." 

In  this  editorial  I  stated  some,  not  all,  of  the  facts, 
and  appealed  from  Dr.  Alden's  decisions  directly  to  the 
members  of  the  board,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  course 
he  was  pursuing,  and  indirectly  to  the  Congregational 
churches.  I  declared  that  it  was  unjust  to  appeal  to 
young  men  and  women  to  give  themselves  to  missionary 
service  and  then  reject  those  who  offered  themselves, 
because  they  held  the  general  faith  of  the  Congregational 
churches  as  semi-officially  interpreted  by  its  representa- 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  475 

live  leaders  of  thought.  Before  the  publication  of  this 
editorial  the  issue  had  been  discussed  by  a  few  behind 
closed  doors.  After  that  publication  it  was  discussed  in 
the  open,  by  the  ministers  and  laymen  in  church  gather- 
ings, by  the  press  both  religious  and  secular,  and  pres- 
ently by  the  missionaries  in  the  field.  There  were  three 
parties  to  this  discussion.  One  minority  held  the  doc- 
trine of  the  future  probation,  and  wished  freedom  to 
hold  it;  another  minority  was  vehemently  opposed  to 
the  doctrine,  and  wished  Congregational  ministers  and 
missionaries  prohibited  from  holding  it;  a  considerable 
majority  wished  peace,  and  therefore  desired  liberty 
to  hold  or  to  reject  it. 

Every  year  a  great  meeting  of  the  American  board  is 
held  for  the  purpose  of  stimulating  interest  in  foreign 
missions.  It  is  one  of  the  chief  religious  gatherings  of 
the  Congregationalists.  In  1886  it  was  held  at  Des 
Moines,  Iowa.  It  was  expected  that  the  policy  of  Dr. 
Alden  would  come  before  the  meeting  for  discussion. 
The  gathering  was  large,  the  interest  intense;  a  full  day 
was  given  to  the  subject;  the  public  interest  was  so 
great  that  Houghton  Mifflin  Company  arranged  for  a 
verbatim  report  of  the  discussion,  and  published  it  in  a 
pamphlet  entitled  "The  Great  Debate."  It  was  cor- 
rectly entitled.  I  have  heard  many  debates  in  my  life- 
time, but  never  one  characterized  by  so  high  a  degree  of 
uniform  eloquence  —  the  eloquence  of  profound  earnest- 
pess,  and  therefore  of  great  simplicity  and  directness  of 
speech. 

The  final  action  taken  was  curiously  characteristic  of 
ecclesiastical  assemblies — intended  to  give  some  measure 
of  self-satisfaction  to  all  parties.  A  resolution  to  ap- 
point a  special  committee  to  ascertain  the  facts  and  re- 
port at  the  next  meeting  of  the  board  was  lost.  Dr. 


476  REMINISCENCES 

Egbert  C.  Smyth  was  dropped  from  the  prudential  com- 
mittee, and  the  doctrine  of  future  probation  was  con- 
demned, though  by  a  close  vote,  as  "divisive  and  perver- 
sive and  dangerous  to  the  churches  at  home  and  abroad.'* 
But  at  the  same  time  there  was  passed  unanimously  a 
resolution  recommending  the  prudential  committee  to 
consider  the  advisability  of  referring  the  doctrinal 
soundness  of  all  candidates  for  aj2ppointment  to  a  local 
council,  so  taking  the  theological  issue  away  from  the 
board.  What  the  effect  of  this  course  would  probably  be 
was  sufficiently  indicated  by  the  fact  that  prior  to  this 
time  ministers  who  refused  to  deny  the  possibility  of  a 
future  probation  had  been  ordained  by  such  councils  in 
various  parts  of  the  country  from  Boston  to  the  Missis- 
sippi River. 

The  Great  Debate  was  held  in  the  opera-house,  packed 
with  an  audience  which  left  "standing  room  only." 
But  the  corporate  members,  who  alone  had  power  to 
vote,  sat  upon  the  stage,  and  the  speakers  had  to  plead 
their  case  with  their  back  to  the  men  whom  they  wished 
to  influence.  At  one  point  in  my  own  speech,  with  the 
instinct  bred  by  my  lawyer's  education,  I  turned  my  back 
upon  the  audience  in  order  to  address  more  effectively 
the  jury,  but  the  cries  of  the  audience  and  the  quiet 
counsel  of  the  chairman  compelled  me  to  abandon  my 
purpose.  At  the  close  of  the  debate  one  of  my  conserva- 
tive friends  greeted  me  with :  — 

"To-day  makes  me  very  sad." 

"Why  so?"  I  asked.  "You  have  carried  a  resolution 
indorsing  your  theology." 

"I  know,"  he  replied;  "but  it  was  quite  evident  from 
the  meeting  how  the  current  is  running." 

He  was  quite  right.  The  Great  Debate  was  held  early 
in  October,  1886.    Four  years  later,  Howard  Bliss  and 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  477 

I  were  installed  in  Plymouth  Church  by  a  large  and 
representative  council,  including  both  conservative  and 
liberal  clergymen,  with  only  one  dissenting  vote,  and 
I  declared  explicitly, "  the  decisive  nature  of  this  world's 
probation  for  every  man  I  repudiate  as  unscriptural," 
and  Mr.  Bliss  was  equally  explicit  upon  this  point,  de- 
claring his  belief  in  an  intermediate  state  —  "a  purgatory, 
if  you  will "  —  which  gives  an  opportunity  for  the  heathen 
as  well  as  for  the  Christian.  Three  years  later  Dr.  Alden 
resigned  his  office  as  secretary  of  the  American  Board, 
and  three  years  after  that  I  was  elected  a  corporate 
member,  an  office  which  I  have  ever  since  held. 
While  no  formal  action  of  the  board  was  taken  reversing 
the  resolution  condemning  the  Andover  theory,  it  is 
quite  safe  to  say  that  since  Dr.  Alden's  resignation  no 
candidate  has  been  rejected  because  he  has  refused  to 
affirm  that  all  the  heathen  have  been  condemned  to  ever- 
lasting punishment.  An  incidental,  but  not  unimpor- 
tant, result  of  this  agitation  was  eventually  a  constitu- 
tional change  in  the  board,  which  is  no  longer  a  close 
corporation,  but  has  been  made  a  delegate  body  respon- 
sible and  responsive  to  the  churches.  I  may  add  that 
the  fear  that  liberty  of  faith  would  "cut  the  nerve  of 
missions"  has  not  been  realized.  The  interest  of  the 
churches  in  foreign  missions,  as  represented  both  by  the 
contributions  received  and  the  missionaries  commis- 
sioned, has  been  greater  in  the  last  twenty  years  than 
in  any  preceding  twenty  years  in  the  history  of  the  board.^ 
This  increase  in  missionary  interest,  however,  has 
been  due,  not  merely  to  the  "larger  hope,"  but  probably 
even  more  to  the  less  dramatic  but  more  important  effect 

1  In  1892,  the  last  year  of|  the  old  regime,  the  expenditures  of  the  board 
were  eight  hundred  and  forty  thousand  dollars;  in  1914  they  were  over  a  mil- 
lion, and  only  the  income  has  been  expended.  The  work  in  the  foreign  field 
has  been  proportionately  increased. 


478  REMINISCENCES 

of  the  democratic  movement  in  revolutionizing  the  pur- 
pose of  the  Christian  Church. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  object  of  the  Church  was  purely 
individualistic;  its  purpose,  solely  by  preaching  the 
Gospel,  to  save  some  out  of  a  world  already  hopelessly 
lost.  When,  about  1825,  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher  preached 
his  six  sermons  on  temperance,  he  was  chided  by  his 
contemporaries  for  preaching  morality;  when,  in  1850, 
his  son  preached  a  gospel  of  liberty,  he  was  condemned 
for  preaching  politics. 

But  the  democratic  spirit  proved  again  too  strong  for 
the  ecclesiastical  spirit.  The  questions  in  which  the 
people  were  interested  were  not  theological  but  sociolog- 
ical; they  were  questions,  not  of  future  salvation  for  the 
few,  but  of  social  salvation  for  all.  The  questions  of 
slavery,  of  reconstruction  in  the  South,  of  public  educa- 
tion, of  the  treatment  of  the  immigrant,  of  the  abolition 
of  poverty,  of  the  cure  of  crime,  of  the  emancipation  of 
women  and  children  from  tasks  unfitted  or  too  great  for 
them,  of  the  redemption  of  the  cities  and  the  factory 
towns  from  the  slums,  absorbed  the  public  mind.  Even 
financial  questions  presented  themselves  as  moral  ques- 
tions: which  was  honest,  a  gold  or  a  silver  standard? 
Ministers  shared  the  popular  interest  —  caught,  if  you 
please,  the  popular  fever.  The  pulpits  followed  the  ex- 
ample set  by  such  men  as  Lyman  Beecher  and  Henry 
Ward  Beecher.  The  churches  began  as  churches  to  take 
an  active  interest  in  social  problems. 

In  1901  I  was  invited  to  preach  the  sermon  at  the 
Diamond  Jubilee  of  the  Congregational  Home  Mission- 
ary Society.  I  defined  my  purpose  in  the  following  sen- 
tences: "What,  then,  I  want  to  say  to  you  this  evening 
is  this :  that  it  is  the  function  of  the  Christian  Church  to 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  479 

establish  the  kingdom  of  God  here  and  now  on  this  earth, 
not  to  save  men,  few  or  many,  from  a  world  given  over 
and  abandoned  as  a  wreck  and  lost,  but  to  save  the  world 
itself  by  transforming  it,  translating  it,  transfusing  it 
with  new  life."  This  was  accepted  without  criticism  as  a 
true  interpretation  of  the  missionary  spirit  of  the  time. 
Fifty  years  before  it  would  have  been  regarded  as  dan- 
gerously radical,  if  not  absolutely  revolutionary.  When 
I  was  a  boy,  I  do  not  think  any  church  in  New  York 
City  had  either  a  parish  house  or  a  mission  chapel;  the 
whole  work  of  the  church  was  done  by  the  Sunday  serv- 
ices, the  weekly  prayer-meeting,  and  the  Sunday-School. 
What  missionary  work  it  did  was  done  through  the  con- 
tribution plate.  Now  every  considerable  church  has  its 
mission  chapel.  Many  of  them  have  their  parish  house, 
with  club  conveniences  for  young  men  and  women, 
kindergartens  for  the  children,  and  often  vocational 
night  schools  for  youth.  What  m  Plymouth  Church  was 
attempted  under  my  pastorate  and  is  being  accomplished 
under  the  pastorate  of  Dr.  Hillis  was  indicated  in  a 
previous  chapter,  and  Plymouth  Church  was  neither 
the  first  to  undertake  this  work  nor  until  very  recently 
was  it  among  the  best  equipped  for  it.  Out  of  the  church 
have  grown  the  Young  Men's  and  the  Young  Women's 
Christian  Associations,  which  beside  spiritual  minis- 
tries provide  healthful  society,  legitimate  recreation, 
and  industrial  schools.  The  greatest  evangelist  of  my 
time  was  D wight  L.  Moody;  the  monuments  which  he 
built  and  which  will  long  preserve  his  memory  are  the 
school  for  girls  at  Northfield  and  the  school  for  boys  at 
Mount  Hermon.  The  greatest  evangelistic  organiza- 
tion of  my  time  was  the  Salvation  Army.  Its  street  pro- 
cessions and  Gospel  hall  meetings  are  now  maintained, 
if  at  all,  by  a  momentum  derived  from  the  emotional 


480  REMINISCENCES 

enthusiasm  of  the  past.  The  chief  work  to  which  that 
enthusiasm  now  inspires  it  is  practical  philanthropy, 
carried  on  in  the  name  and  the  spirit  of  Christ  among  the 
poor  and  the  outcast.  In  brief,  the  Episcopalian  defini- 
tion of  the  Church  as  *'a  congregation  of  faithful  men, 
in  the  which  the  pure  Word  of  God  is  preached  and  the 
sacraments  be  duly  administered  according  to  Christian 
ordinance"  is  no  longer  adequate.  The  church  of  to-day 
is  not  merely  a  teaching  and  a  worshiping  organization, 
it  is  also  a  working  organization;  and  this  is  preemi- 
nently true  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 

The  foreign  missionary  work  has  felt  the  same  im- 
pulse. When  Dr.  Cyrus  Hamlin  organized  Robert  Col- 
lege in  Constantinople  he  was  criticised  by  conservative 
religious  sentiment  at  home  for  turning  aside  from 
preaching  the  Gospel  to  promote  secular  education.  Now 
over  eighty  thousand  students  are  pursuing  their  edu- 
cation in  foreign  lands  under  the  auspices  of  the  American 
Board,  and  of  them  over  twelve  thousand  are  in  insti- 
tutions for  the  higher  education,  collegiate  or  profes- 
sional. Industrial  education,  accompanied  by  the  in- 
troduction of  modern  tools  and  the  training  of  the 
people  in  their  use,  lays,  in  an  advancing  civilization,  a 
basis  for  spiritual  instruction.^  The  medical  missionary 
reaches  by  his  healing  thousands  whom  the  speaking 
missionary  cannot  reach  by  his  preaching,  and  com- 
mends Christianity  by  its  practice  to  many  to  whom  he 
could  never  commend  it  simply  by  its  doctrine.  The  con- 
ception of  the  message  of  Christianity  has  undergone 
a  radical  change.  "The  Missionary,"  says  Dr.  James  L. 
Barton,  the  secretary  of  the  American  Board,  "preaches 
salvation  no  less  than  before;  but  it  is  salvation  for  the  life 

^  In  the  spirit  of  Paul's  saying:  "That  was  not  first  which  is  spiritual,  but 
that  which  is  natural,  and  afterwards  that  which  is  spiritual."  —  1  Cor.  xv.  46. 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  481 

that  now  is  —  salvation  to  one's  self  and  for  himself,  and 
to  society  and  for  society  —  salvation  for  the  sake  of  the 
world  in  which  he  lives.  It  is  now  taken  for  granted 
that,  if  a  man  is  saved  for  the  life  that  now  is,  he  will  be 
abundantly  prepared  for  the  life  that  is  to  come."  ^  In 
a  sermon  preached  by  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher  before  the 
American  Board  in  1827,  he  treated  heathenism,  Ro- 
manism, despotism,  crime,  together  as  "resources  of 
the  adversary"  which  must  be  overthrown.  In  1903-04 
Charles  Cuthbert  Hall,  in  his  addresses  delivered  in 
India  to  crowded  congregations  of  cultivated  Hindus, 
treated  heathenism  as  a  stage  of  spiritual  development  in 
a  people  seeking  after  God.  Li  1827  the  Church  regarded 
the  missionary  as  a  soldier  going  out  to  war  against  the 
enemy;  in  1903  as  a  husbandman  going  out  to  sow  the 
seed  of  a  larger  truth  in  a  soil  waiting  to  receive  it.  In 
1812  Dr.  Judson  was  forbidden  by  the  British  Govern- 
ment to  preach  the  Gospel  in  India;  the  authorities 
feared  the  race  hostility  such  preaching  would  excite. 
In  1913  the  Chinese  Governor  of  China  asked  the 
churches  to  set  aside  a  day  for  prayer  that  the  country 
might  be  guided  by  a  wise  solution  of  her  critical  prob- 
lems. It  is  hardly  possible  to  overestimate  the  signifi- 
cance of  so  great  a  revolution. 

One  other  influence,  wholly  unorganic,  has  cooper- 
ated with  the  scientific  development  and  the  democratic 
spu'it  in  revolutionizing  religious  thought  and  religious 
institutions:  the  study  of  comparative  religion  and  the 
direction  of  the  thought  of  the  Christian  people  to  the 
life  of  Christ. 

The  development  of  the  East  India  trade  toward  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  opening  of  Japan  and 
China  to  foreign  intercourse  in  the  nineteenth  century, 

^  "The  Modern  Missionary,"  Harvard  Theological  Review,  January,  1915. 


482  REMINISCENCES 

and  the  development  of  the  foreign  missionary  move- 
ment which  accompanied  these  commercial  enterprises, 
created  a  popular  interest  in  the  study  of  foreign  reli- 
gions, and  the  works  of  Max  Muller,  the  first  of  which 
was  published  in  1872,  brought  the  subject  within  the 
comprehension  of  other  than  expert  Oriental  students. 
Almost  simultaneously  popular  attention  was  diverted 
from  the  study  of  catechisms  and  creeds  to  the  study 
of  the  hfe  of  Christ  by  a  series  of  wholly  unconnected 
volumes,  beginning  with  the  English  translation  of 
Strauss's  life  of  Christ  by  George  Eliot  in  1846.  That 
interested  only  scholars;  but  Renan's  "Life  of  Jesus," 
published  in  1863,  had  all  the  fascination  of  romance  and 
became  at  once  one  of  the  popular  books  of  the  decade. 
I  have  in  my  library  over  a  score  of  lives  of  Christ  in 
English  published  between  1850  and  1890.  Of  these,  a 
republication  of  a  comparatively  ancient  Jewish  life  is 
hostile;  and  one,  that  of  Strauss,  is  critical;  but  in  general 
their  tone  varies  from  great  respect  for  a  moral  genius 
to  devout  reverence  for  the  divine  Son  of  God.  The  effect 
of  these  publications  on  the  popular  mind  is  illustrated 
by  the  saying  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  himself  an  agnostic: 
*'  Not  even  now  would  it  be  easy,  even  for  an  unbeliever, 
to  find  a  better  translation  of  the  rule  of  virtue  from  the 
abstract  into  the  concrete  than  to  endeavor  so  to  five 
that  Christ  would  approve  our  life."  These  hves  of 
Christ,  presenting  almost  every  conceivable  view  of  his 
character  and  of  the  documents  on  which  we  depend 
for  our  knowledge  of  him,  produced  an  influence  on 
Christian  thought  and  life,  all  the  more  effective  be- 
cause wholly  spontaneous,  and  did  much  to  produce  an 
undefined  movement  toward  a  less  dogmatic  and  a  more 
practical  religion  which  has  been  entitled  "Back  to 
Christ." 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  483 

This  revival  of  the  original  and  practical  Christianity- 
has  tended  toward  Christian  unity.  Intellectual  defini- 
tions divide;  cooperation  in  work  unites.  Denomina- 
tional organizations  still  exist,  perhaps  always  will  exist; 
but  denominational  barriers  do  noL  A  Methodist  con- 
temporary of  mine  tells  me  that  when  he  was  a  young 
man  in  his  teens,  lecturing  in  New  England  on  tem- 
perance, he  was  invited  by  one  of  its  members  to  speak 
on  a  Sunday  evening  in  the  Congregational  church. 
But  the  minister  objected.  This  Methodist  might,  said 
the  Congregationalist,  bring  in  his  Arminianism,  and 
then  what  would  become  of  the  doctrines  of  our  holy 
religion?  It  is  inconceivable  that  such  an  objection 
could  be  made  in  our  time.  When  I  joined  Mr.  Beecher 
in  the  "Christian  Union,"  it  was  very  difficult  to  get 
subscribers;  for  the  denominational  paper  had  always 
the  first  place,  and  generally  there  was  no  second  place 
for  an  undenominational  paper.  Now  the  public  looks 
to  the  undenominational  paper  and  to  the  secular  press 
for  religious  news  and  religious  views,  and  the  de- 
nominational papers  are  largely  taken  for  their  de- 
nominational and  eccelsiastical  information  and  inter- 
pretation. The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association,  the  Student 
Volunteer  Movement,  the  Men  and  Religion  Movement, 
and  the  Federation  of  Churches  unite  all  evangelical 
Christians  in  a  common  work,  and  fellowship  between 
evangelical  and  liberal  churches  is  increasingly  frequent. 
Among  Protestants  it  is  only  the  so-called  Catholic  party 
in  the  Episcopal  Church  which  still  maintains  an  attitude 
of  eccelsiastical  isolation. 

These  tendencies  have  produced  a  radical  change  in  the 
popular  conception  of  religion,  and  a  still  more  radical, 
though  scarcely  recognized,  change  in  the  motives  which 


484  REMINISCENCES 

inspire  to  religious  activity.  In  1785  Archdeacon  Paley 
published  his  "Moral  and  Political  Philosophy,"  in 
which  he  says,  "Virtue  is  the  doing  good  to  mankind 
in  obedience  to  the  will  of  God  and  for  the  sake  of  ever- 
lasting happiness."  Most  of  the  social  service  of  to-day 
is  rendered  with  no  thought  of  future  compensation,  and 
much  of  it  with  no  thought  of  the  will  of  God.  It  is 
rendered  spontaneously  for  the  love  of  doing  good,  as  the 
picture  is  painted  by  the  artist  because  he  loves  beauty 
or  the  great  enterprises  of  our  day  are  carried  on  for 
love  of  achievement.  Doubtless  some  loss  is  involved 
in  this  forgetfulness  of  the  unknown  future  and  the  will 
of  God,  and  to  many  the  loss  of  piety  in  this  philan- 
thropic age  appears  an  irreparable  loss.  But  to  me  doing 
good  as  the  expression  of  an  inward  life  is  better  than 
doing  good  either  to  win  a  reward  or  to  obey  a  law.  How- 
ever I  am  not  here  concerned  to  expound  a  philosophy,  but 
to  interpret  life.  And  not  least  of  the  changes  which  I 
have  seen  in  the  past  sixty  years  is  this  change  from  the 
religion  of  obedience  to  law  for  the  sake  of  reward  to 
a  religion  which  is  the  spontaneous  expression  of  an 
inward  life  of  faith  and  hope  and  love. 

This  chapter  would  not  be  complete  without  a  men- 
tion, necessarily  brief,  of  some  of  my  contemporaries  who 
with  different  temperaments  and  by  different  methods 
have  been  leaders  in  what  has  been  well  called  the  new 
thinking:  Dr.  George  A.  Gordon,  the  philosophic  inter- 
preter of  the  movement,  in  whom  is  combined  a  thorough 
familiarity  with  the  best  thoughts  of  the  past  and  a 
spirit  thoroughly  modern;  Dr.  Theodore  A.  Munger,  the 
perfection  of  whose  style,  the  natural  expression  of  a 
carefully  perfected  thought,  has  made  his  writings  the 
more  effective  because  they  were  never  controversial; 
Dr.  Washington  Gladden,  whose  judicial  temper  enabling 


A  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  485 

liim  to  see  all  sides  of  controverted  questions  has  been 
combined  with  an  intensity  of  conviction  not  often 
found  in  so  catholic  a  spirit;  President  Henry  Churchill 
King,  of  Oberlin,  who  has  interpreted  by  his  writings 
with  great  clearness  and  felicity  the  change  from  a 
purely  individualistic  to  a  social  Christianity;  Dr. 
William  Newton  Clarke,  of  Colgate  University,  whose 
"Christian  Theology"  is  the  most  religious  book  on 
systematic  theology  I  have  ever  read  —  I  am  almost  in- 
clined to  say,  the  only  one;  Edward  Everett  Hale,  whose 
translation  of  faith,  hope,  and  love  into  modern  phrase- 
ology has  made  it  a  motto  in  many  Christian  households; 
John  G.  Whittier,  whose  religious  poetry  is  luminous 
with  the  Inner  Light  in  which  he  so  devoutly  trusted; 
and  Phillips  Brooks,  whose  personality,  more  eloquent 
even  than  his  winged  words,  made  him  the  most  pro- 
phetic preacher  of  his  time. 

The  scientific  discoveries  undermining  the  authority 
of  both  the  Bible  and  the  Church  as  the  ultimate  appeal, 
the  democratic  spirit  making  impossible  belief  in  the  his- 
toric fall  and  a  consequent  total  depravity  of  the  race, 
the  development  of  humanity  at  the  same  time  abolish- 
ing torture  from  human  punishment  and  belief  in  torture 
as  a  divine  punishment,  the  increasing  acquaintance  with 
the  peoples  of  the  world  and  the  study  of  their  religions 
broadening  the  sympathies  of  men  and  disclosing  to 
Christians  the  work  and  way  of  God  in  pagan  com- 
munities, the  study  of  the  life  of  Christ  turning  the 
thoughts  of  men  from  the  metaphysics  of  theology  to  the 
practical  life  of  faith  and  hope  and  love  exhibited  in  the 
Man  of  history,  the  coming  together  of  different  Chris- 
tian souls  not  on  the  basis  of  a  common  creed  but  under 
the  inspiration  of  a  common  purpose,  and  the  resultant 
change  of  the  religious  motive  from  one  of  obedience  to  law 


486  REMINISCENCES 

to  one  of  acceptance  of  life  as  a  free  gift  from  the  Author 
and  Giver  of  life,  all  combine  to  make  the  last  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  the  epoch  of  the  greatest  spiritual 
progress  the  world  has  ever  seen;  not  greater  in  spirit, 
but  greater  in  extent  even  than  the  first  century  after 
the  birth  of  Christ. 


CHAPTER  XX 

LOOKING   FORWARD 

I  AM  writing  this  chapter  in  my  wife's  room,  at  her 
desk,  looking  out  of  an  eastern  window  at  the  moun- 
tain as  the  sun  is  rising  over  it.  The  house  is  sub- 
stantially what  it  was  when  built  over  forty  years  ago, 
though  some  changes  have  added  to  its  appearance 
without  and  to  its  comfort  within.  Under  its  roof  two 
of  my  children  and  three  of  my  grandchildren  were 
born.  Twice  it  has  been  made  radiant  with  joy  by  a 
wedding;  never  yet  has  it  been  darkened  with  sorrow 
by  a  funeral.  All  my  children  and  all  my  grandchildren 
are  living;  all  of  them  within  the  sound  of  my  voice  — 
the  telephone  voice;  all  but  one  so  near  me  that  with 
them  I  hold  not  infrequent  conversations.  Three  of  my 
four  sons  have  made  their  homes  near  by.  Five  of 
my  children  have  by  their  marriage  brought  into  the 
family  those  who  are  as  dear  to  me  as  those  born  in  my 
home. 

On  my  bureau  are  pictures  of  my  two  daughters, 
and  over  the  desk  where  I  am  writing  is  a  group  picture 
of  my  four  sons,  all  living  useful  lives,  and  whenever  I 
am  blue  —  as  who  is  not  at  times?  —  I  look  at  these 
pictures,  think  of  what  my  children  are  doing  in  the 
world,  and  say  to  myself,  You  have  been  of  some  use, 
for  if  it  had  not  been  for  you  they  would  not  have  been. 
In  my  library  I  write  at  a  black  oak  table  which  was 
given  to  me  by  the  young  men  of  Plymouth  Church 


488  REMINISCENCES 

when  I  retired  from  its  pastorate.  A  bronze  statue  of 
David,  sling  in  hand,  which  they  gave  me  on  my  sixtieth 
birthday,  helps  to  keep  alive  in  me  the  courage  of  youth. 
A  little  bronze  of  mother  and  child,  the  gift  of  one  of 
my  own  children,  reminds  me  daily  that  "love  is  the 
greatest  thing  in  the  world."  The  four  or  five  thousand 
books  which  make  of  every  room  in  the  house  a  library 
are  nearly  all  acquaintances,  some  of  them  friends.  For 
this  collection  was  not  made;  it  grew.  If,  however,  there 
are  very  few  of  these  books  with  which  I  have  not 
some  personal  acquaintance,  still  fewer  are  those  I  have 
read  through.  For,  except  an  occasional  novel  or  biog- 
raphy, I  rarely  read  a  book  through.  I  go  to  my 
books  to  get  what  I  want  as  I  want  it  —  information, 
instruction,  inspiration.  I  would  no  more  expect  to  get 
all  a  book  has  to  give  me  in  one  reading  than  all  that  a 
friend  has  to  give  me  in  one  conversation. 

The  changes  in  the  village  in  the  forty-five  years  dur- 
ing which  it  has  been  my  home  are  examples  of  the 
changes  in  our  national  life.  The  village  has  built  and 
owns  its  waterworks;  they  are  a  profitable  investment 
and  are  gradually  paying  off  the  bonds  issued  to  con- 
struct them.  We  have  good  roads  and  sidewalks;  our 
schools,  both  public  and  private,  are  greatly  improved, 
and  more  boys  and  girls  are  going  from  the  high  schools 
to  college.  We  have  no  open  saloons.  We  began  a  cam- 
paign against  them  forty  years  ago,  with  a  corporal's 
guard  to  lead  the  attack.  We  were  beaten,  of  course; 
renewed  the  attack;  after  twenty  years  won  our  first 
victory,  shut  the  saloons  out,  and  they  have  never  come 
back.  Every  two  years  we  have  another  temperance 
campaign,  but  always,  thus  far,  with  the  same  result. 
There  is  still  some  illegal  selling;  but  it  is  perilous. 
Grand  juries  are  beginning  to  indict,  district  attorneys 


LOOKING  FORWARD  489 

to  prosecute,  juries  to  convict,  and  judges  to  sentence 
offenders. 

Every  one  says  that  church  attendance  in  America 
is  decreasing  and  that  the  churches  are  losing  their  in- 
fluence. What  every  one  says  must  be  true.  But  there 
are  some  facts  in  our  community  which  it  is  difficult  to 
reconcile  with  what  every  one  says.  We  have  in  Corn- 
wall six  churches  and  a  Friends  meeting-house.  Four  of 
them  have  been  enlarged  since  I  came  here;  an  additional 
chapel  for  union  services  has  been  built;  and,  I  believe, 
all  the  churches  have  added  to  their  facilities  for  Sun- 
day-School work.  I  am  told  that  all  the  churches  are 
well  filled  on  Sunday  mornings;  the  one  I  attend  has 
some  vacant  seats,  but  very  few  empty  pews.  They 
have  all  done  good  work  in  our  temperance  campaigns; 
not  the  least  efficient  helper  in  this  work  has  been  the 
Roman  Catholic  church.  How  much  they  have  done 
indirectly  to  promote  other  influences  and  organizations 
for  the  public  welfare  it  is  impossible  to  tell.  A  free  lec- 
ture course  in  one  of  our  public  school  buildings  is  so 
well  attended  that  one  must  go  early  to  get  a  seat;  a 
free  library  has  not  only  books  and  periodicals,  but, 
what  is  more  difficult  to  secure,  readers;  a  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  holds  weekly  meetings;  a  Boys' 
Club  has  put  up  a  modest  gymnasium  and  made  it 
available  by  moderate  rentals  for  all  village  organiza- 
tions; a  Village  Improvement  Society  has  converted  an 
old  house  built  in  Revolutionary  times  into  a  village 
homestead;  two  Camp-Fire  groups  and  a  Girls'  Club  do 
for  the  girls  what  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion and  the  Boys'  Club  do  for  the  boys.  Both  boys  and 
girls  were  without  either  leadership  or  organization 
forty  years  ago.  All  these  changes  have  taken  place 
within  the  last  forty  years,  and  as  my  travels  take  me 


490  REMINISCENCES 

about  tlie  country  they  all  seem  to  be  paralleled  by 
similar  moral  and  intellectual  gains  in  other  towns  and 
villages.  These  are  the  springs  of  our  national  life,  and 
are  more  important  than  many  of  the  events  described 
in  startling  type  by  our  daily  papers. 

What  of  myself?  I  am  writing  these  pages  on  the  25th 
day  of  June,  1915;  on  the  18th  of  next  December  I  shall 
be  eighty  years  of  age.  I  cannot  believe  it.  I  seem  to 
myself  to  be  in  better  health  than  I  was  at  eighteen. 
My  interest  in  present  problems  and  my  hopes  for  the 
future  of  my  country  are  as  great  as  they  ever  were.  I 
take  an  active  part  in  the  editorial  direction  of  "The 
Outlook."  I  have  given  up  lyceum  lecturing;  but  I 
gladly  share  with  others,  by  both  voice  and  pen,  in  the 
public  discussions  of  the  questions  of  the  day;  and,  save 
for  a  long  summer  vacation,  reserved  for  quiet  literary 
work,  I  preach  at  least  two  Sundays  in  the  month.  I 
should  preach  every  Sunday  were  it  not  for  the  protests 
of  my  children;  many  years  ago  I  reached  the  point  at 
which  I  think  it  wise  for  the  father  to  give  to  the  coun- 
sels of  his  children  something  of  the  authority  of  com- 
mands. 

In  one  respect  my  life  has  succeeded  beyond  the 
dreams  of  my  youth.  I  have  never  cared  for  money; 
perhaps  if  I  had  cared  more  my  wife  would  have  had  an 
easier  time,  but  I  doubt  whether  we  should  have  been 
happier.  Nor  for  reputation;  therefore  the  attacks  made 
upon  me  and  the  misreports  and  misrepresentations  to 
which  I  have  been  subjected  have  never  much  troubled 
me.  They  have  had  a  value.  One  can  learn  his  faults 
better  from  his  critics  than  from  his  friends,  because  his 
critics  are  more  frank.  Nor  for  power;  I  like  to  influence, 
but  not  to  command.  But  I  have  desired  friends;  and 
it  sometimes  seems  to  me  that  no  man  ever  had  more 


LOOKING  FORWARD  491 

friends  than  I  have.  I  am  often  stopped  on  the  street 
by  a  stranger  who  thanks  me  for  some  word  of  counsel 
or  inspiration  received;  and  scarcely  a  week  goes  by 
that  I  do  not  receive  a  letter  of  grateful  appreciation 
from  some  unknown  friend  whom  I  never  shall  see,  and 
who,  perhaps,  has  never  seen  me. 

I  have  other  invisible  friends  who  people  my  quiet 
home  with  their  companionship.  I  believe  that  death 
and  resurrection  are  synonymous,  that  death  is  the 
dropping  of  the  body  from  the  spirit,  that  resurrection 
is  the  up-springing  of  the  spirit  from  the  body;  and  I 
think  of  my  friends  and  companions,  not  as  lying  in  the 
grave  waiting  for  a  future  resurrection,  nor  as  living  in 
some  distant  land  singing  hymns  in  loveless  forgetful- 
ness  of  those  they  loved  on  earth.  I  think  of  them  as  a 
great  cloud  of  witnesses  looking  on  to  see  how  we  run 
the  race  that  is  set  before  us,  grieved  in  our  failures, 
glad  in  our  triumphs.  I  think  of  my  mother  rejoicing 
in  the  joys  of  the  boy  whom  she  was  not  permitted  to 
care  for  on  earth;  of  my  father  still  counseling  me  by 
his  unspoken  wisdom  in  my  times  of  perplexity;  of  my 
wife  giving  me  rest  and  reinvigoration  by  her  love.  So 
I  am  never  lonely  when  I  am  alone;  rarely  restless  when 
I  am  sleepless. 

I  believe  that  I  have  learned  one  secret  of  happiness; 
it  is  a  habit  easier  to  describe  than  to  adopt. 

We  live  in  the  past  and  in  the  future.  The  present  is 
only  a  threshold  over  which  we  cross  in  going  from  the 
past  into  the  future.  We  live,  therefore,  in  our  memory 
and  in  our  anticipation.  He  who  forms  the  habit  of 
forgetting  the  unpleasant  and  remembering  the  pleasant 
lives  in  a  happy  past;  he  who  forms  the  habit  of  antici- 
pating the  pleasant  and  striking  out  from  his  anticipa- 
tion the  unpleasant  lives  in  a  happy  future.   I  have  no 


492  REMINISCENCES 

wish  to  live  in  a  fool's  paradise;  but  it  is  no  better  to 
live  in  a  fool's  purgatory.  I  therefore  allow  myself  to 
anticipate  evil  only  that  I  may  avoid  it  if  it  is  avoidable 
or,  if  it  is  unavoidable,  may  meet  it  with  wisdom  and 
courage.  I  recall  past  errors,  follies,  and  faults  in  order 
that  I  may  learn  their  lesson  and  avoid  their  repetition. 
Then  I  forget  them.  The  prophet  tells  me  that  my 
Father  buries  my  sins  in  the  depths  of  the  sea.  I  have 
no  inclination  to  fish  them  up  again  and  take  an  in- 
ventory. I  gladly  dismiss  from  my  memory  what  he 
no  more  remembers  against  me  forever.  Thus  my  re- 
ligion is  to  me,  not  a  servitude,  but  an  emancipation; 
not  a  self-torment  because  of  past  sins,  but  a  divinely 
given  joy  because  of  present  forgiveness. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  write  freely  of  the  expe- 
riences of  one's  heart  to  a  throng  of  unknown  readers. 
It  is  easier  to  portray  them  to  an  intimate  friend.  For 
this  reason  I  transfer  to  these  pages  a  few  sentences 
which  I  wrote  to  my  wife  from  Terre  Haute  during  her 
absence  in  the  East  in  the  summer  of  1863 :  — 

Ought  we  to  go  alway  through  life  condemned  of  ourselves 
and  thinking  and  feeling  that  God  must  condemn  us?  Is 
this  a  necessity?  Is  it  not  possible  so  to  live  that  our  own 
conscience  approves  us?  And  we  have  the  happiness  of  feel- 
ing that  we  have  the  approval  of  God  and  of  our  own  hearts? 
It  is  possible.  Is  it  not  practicable?  Was  it  not  Paul's  ex- 
perience? ...  It  is  true  that  we  ought  never  to  be  satisfied 
with  ourselves  —  that  our  ideal  of  holiness  ought  always  to 
outrun  our  attainments;  that  we  ought  always  to  desire 
something  more  and  better.  But  we  may  be  self-approved 
and  not  self-satisfied.  We  may  be  dissatisfied  and  yet  not 
self -condemned . 

It  is  thus  at  eighty  years  of  age  that  I  look  back  upon 
the  years  that  have  passed  since  I  imbibed  something  of 
the  spirit  of  faith  and  hope  and  love  in  my  grandfather's 


LOOKING  FORWARD  493 

home  at  Farmington.  I  am  far  from  satisfied  with  this 
review;  but  I  am  not  self -condemned.  I  say  to  my 
Father,  as  I  say  to  myself:  I  have  often  been  defeated, 
but  I  have  fought  a  good  fight;  I  have  often  faltered  and 
fallen,  but  I  have  kept  up  the  race;  I  have  been  besieged 
all  my  life  with  doubts,  and  they  still  sometimes  hammer 
at  the  gates,  but  I  have  kept  my  faith. 

And  I  look  forward  to  the  Great  Adventure,  which 
now  cannot  be  far  off,  with  awe,  but  not  with  appre- 
hension. I  enjoy  my  work,  my  home,  my  friends,  my 
life.  I  shall  be  sorry  to  part  with  them.  But  always  I 
have  stood  in  the  bow  looking  forward  with  hopeful 
anticipation  to  the  life  before  me.  When  the  time  comes 
for  my  embarkation,  and  the  ropes  are  cast  off  and  I 
put  out  to  sea,  I  think  I  shall  still  be  standing  in  the 
bow  and  still  looking  forward  with  eager  curiosity  and 
glad  hopefulness  to  the  new  world  to  which  the  unknown 
voyage  will  bring  me. 


THE   END 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Abby,  wife  of  Lyman,  as  a 
helpmeet,  75,  76;  death,  76;  burial 
at  Hildesheim,  77;  her  portrait  in 
last  twenty-one  verses  of  the  thirty- 
first  chapter  of  Proverbs,  77;  her 
attitude  toward  Lyman's  ministerial 
aspirations,  133,  135;  her  economies 
at  Terre  Haute,  193-98;  goes  East 
on  vacation,  219;  letter  of  Lyman's 
father  to,  290;  illness  of,  294;  adopts 
fresh-air  cure  for  tuberculosis,  300, 
301;  does  pastoral  duties,  312;  con- 
ducts "  Aunt  Patience  "  Depart- 
ment of  the  "  Christian  Union," 
338,  339;  co-pastor  at  Plymouth 
Church.  376,  377,  387.  See  Hamlin, 
Abby. 

Abbott,  Abigail,  72. 

Abbott,  Austin,  brother  of  Lyman, 
enters  New  York  University,  22; 
taken  to  New  York  to  live,  23 ;  lives 
with  brothers  in  New  York,  38-42; 
manages  Lyman's  finances,  39,  62; 
his  influence  on  Lyman,  61,  66;  as 
lawyer,  62,  63;  Dean  of  the  New 
York  University  Law  School,  63; 
assistance  and  advice  rendered  Ly- 
man by,  63 ;  in  firm  of  Abbott  Broth- 
ers, 71;  admitted  to  the  bar,  73;  his 
duties  in  the  law-firm,  85;  work  of, 
on  election  day,  1 1 1 ;  at  Farmington, 
157;  writes  to  Lyman  about  Union 
Commission,  243;  suggestions  of,  to 
Lyman,  in  conduct  of  Plymouth 
Church,  366,  367;  death,  381;  on 
Book  of  Leviticus,  461. 

Abbott,  Benjamin,  grandfather  of 
Abby  Abbott,  177. 

Abbott,  Benjamin,  distant  cousin  of 
Lyman,  72. 

Abbott,  Benjamin  Vaughan,  brother 
of  Lyman,  enters  New  York  Uni- 
versity, 22;  taken  to  New  York  to 
live,  23;  lives  with  brothers  in  New 
York,  38-42;  his  influence  on  Ly- 
man, 61,  66;  his  character,  63,  64; 
takes  to  law  editorship  and  author- 


ship, 64;  extract  from  unpublished 
writings,  65,  66;  in  firm  of  Abbott 
Brothers,  71;  admitted  to  the  bar, 
73;  sends  weekly  letter  to  Abby 
Hamlin,  74;  counsel  in  the  "Times" 
contempt  case,  83,  84;  his  duties  in 
the  law-firm,  85;  in  "Times"  libel 
case,  87;  work  of,  on  election  day, 
110;  takes  cottage  adjoining  Ly- 
man's, 122;  supporter  of  Mr. 
Beecher,  125;  and  Lyman's  minis- 
terial aspirations,  133,  139,  140; 
contributor  to  the  "Morton  Street 
Gazette,"  157. 

Abbott,  Betsey,  grandmother  of  Ly- 
man, 72. 

Abbott,  Charles  E.,  uncle  of  Lyman, 
school  of,  at  Norwich,  22,  24;  joins 
brothers  in  establishing  girls'  school 
at  New  York,  24. 

Abbott,  Edward,  brother  of  Lyman, 
left  at  Farmington  with  Aunt  Sal- 
lucia,  23,  157;  his  religious  views, 
66, 67;  his  hand  in  the  Reminiscences, 
67;  work  of,  on  election  day,  110; 
lives  with  Lyman,  122;  becomes 
minister,  131,  132;  his  memorial 
edition  of  the  Young  Christian,  143; 
marriage,  243;  suggests  conferences 
on  education  in  the  South,  423. 

Abbott,  Elizabeth,  aunt  of  Lyman,  41. 

Abbott,  George,  of  Andover,  72. 

Abbott,  George,  of  Rowley,  72. 

Abbott,  Gorham,  uncle  of  Lyman, 
joins  brothers  in  establishing  girls' 
school  at  New  York,  23,  24;  estab- 
lishes new  school  (later  Spingler 
Institute),  24;  puts  library  at  Ly- 
man's disposal,  282. 

Abbott,  Jacob,  grandfather  of  Lyman, 
his  character,  6,  7;  his  house,  7-9; 
his  business,  8;  aphorisms  of,  8;  his 
conditions  for  admittance  to  "Few- 
acres  University,"  12;  his  prayers, 
18,  19;  farewell  address  to  Sunday 
School,  19;  death,  22;  descent  of,  72. 

Abbott,  Jacob,  father  of  Lyman,  re- 


496 


INDEX 


moval  to  Maine,  2;  health,  2;  home 
at  Little  Blue,  2,  3;  removal  to 
New  York,  3,  23;  opens  Abbott 
School  for  girls,  3,  23,  24;  an  in- 
ventor, 4;  teaches  son  lesson  of  en- 
durance, 4,  5;  death  of  wife,  23 
desolation  at  wife's  death,  23,  24 
marries  Mrs.  Woodbury,  38,  136 
gives  up  teaching  and  takes  to  au- 
thorship, 38;  offers  Lyman  choice 
of  going  to  college  or  into  business, 
44;  tutor  and  Professor  at  Amherst 
College,  46,  142,  143;  instrumental 
in  introducing  Lowell  Mason  to 
Boston  as  teacher  of  music,  50;  an- 
cestry of,  72;  radical  in  purposes, 
conservative  in  methods,  98;  his 
advice  to  Lyman  with  regard  to 
anti-slavery  influence,  106;  and  Ly- 
man's ministerial  aspirations,  136- 
39;  Lyman's  reverence  for,  and 
indebtedness  to,  141,  142;  birth  and 
early  career,  142;  his  method  of 
dealing  with  young  men  and  his 
moral  power  over  young  people, 
142-47;  in  charge  of  Mount  Vernon 
School,  144-47;  accustomed  to 
throw  responsibility  on  the  young, 
147;  principle  by  which  he  was 
guided  in  religious  instruction,  147; 
writes  T}ie  Young  Christian  and 
The  Corner-stone,  147,  148;  habits 
of  work,  148;  Newman's  criticism 
of  his  Corncr-Stone,  150;  his  account 
of  a  visit  to  Newman,  151-55; 
Newman's  impression  of  his  visit, 
155;  advice  to  son  on  attitude 
toward  critics,  156;  editor  of  "Mor- 
ton Street  Gazette,"  157,  158;  his 
method  of  dealing  with  children, 
158;  laid  foundations  of  Lyman's 
theological  thinldng  and  his  reli- 
gious experience,  159;  his  religious 
counsel  to  his  son,  159-63;  his  reli- 
gious influence  upon  his  son,  163- 
72;  his  religious  beliefs,  164-72; 
letter  of,  to  Abby  Abbott,  290;  of- 
fered editorship  of  "Harper's  Maga- 
zine," 307;  on  requirement  of  igno- 
rance in  a  writer,  308;  lends  Lyman 
money  with  which  to  build,  318,  319; 
on  purpose  of  religious  paper,  336, 
337;  on  title  "Glad  Tidings,"  349. 

Abbott,  Jane,  wife  of  John,  41. 

Abbott,  John  S.  C,  uncle  of  Lyman, 


24,  148;  in  Colonnade  Row,  24,  157; 
gives  up  teaching  and  takes  to  au- 
thorship, 38;  removes  to  Brunswick, 
38;  writes  Life  of  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte, 38,  307;  advises  Lyman  to 
preach  at  Wilton,  176;  on  method  of 
securing  a  parish,  182;  employs  Ly- 
man to  write  on  Civil  War,  194. 

Abbott,  Lawrence,  son  of  Lyman, 
birth,  122;  suggests  that  Roosevelt 
be  invited  to  join  "Outlook"  staff, 
443. 

Abbott,  Lydia,  72. 

Abbott,  Lyman,  bom  in  Boston,  1; 
beginning  of  his  recollections,  3; 
has  earache,  4;  at  Uncle  Samuel's 
school,  5,  9-13;  his  recollections  of 
his  grandfather's  house,  5,  7-9;  feel- 
ings toward  Puritans,  6,  19;  not 
susceptible  to  hypnotic  influence  or 
to  emotional  excitement,  10;  his 
studies,  11;  his  sports,  11,  12;  views 
about  guns  as  boys  toy,  11,  12; 
lesson  of  broken  vase,  12;  fishing 
expeditions  of,  13;  his  childhood 
personality,  14,  15;  early  religious 
influences,  15-19;  his  mind  dwells  on 
the  pleasant  things,  19;  his  early 
theology,  20,  21;  for  a  religion 
wholly  natural,  21;  ambition  to  be 
minister,  21;  childish  preaching,  21; 
removed  to  Uncle  Charles's  school  at 
Norwich,  22;  taken  to  New  York  to 
live,  23;  life  in  New  York  from  1849 
to  1852, 25,  38-42;  letter  of,  concern- 
ing concert  of  Julien,  29-31 ;  not  a  to- 
tal abstainer,  31,  117;  his  description 
of  a  riot,  33-36;  visits  scenes  of  vice 
in  New  York,  36;  always  went  to 
church,37;  debt  to  his  three  aunts  and 
his  mother,  41,  42;  prepares  for  col- 
lege, 43;  decides  to  go  to  college,  44; 
a  freshman,  45;  member  of  Eu- 
cleian  Society,  47;  lays  foundation  of 
extemporaneous  speech,  48;  his  ad- 
miration for  Greek  language  and  lit- 
erature, 51,  52;  his  admiration  for 
Cicero,  52;  his  instructors  at  the 
University,  52-56;  his  reading  while 
in  college,  57,  58;  his  study  of  theol- 
ogy, 58;  influence  of  Edwards's  The 
Freedom  of  the  Will  on  his  thought 
and  character,  58-60;  influence  of 
Foster's  Decision  of  Character,  60; 
steps  of  his  self-education  at  this 


INDEX 


497 


time,  60,  61;  influence  of  his  broth- 
ers Vaughan  and  Austin  upon,  61; 
Austin  acts  as  guardian  to,  62; 
advised  and  assisted  by  Austin,  63; 
pamphlet  on  The  Uncontradicted 
Testimony  in  the  Beecher  Case,  63; 
his  Sunday  Evening  Lectures,  63; 
his  relation  to  his  brother  Edward, 
66,  67;  influence  of  Dr.  Willard 
Parker  and  Dr.  Stephen  H.  Tyng 
on,  68-70;  plays  the  organ  in  church, 
70;  turned  from  Episcopal  to  Pres- 
byterian church,  70,  71;  in  firm  of 
Abbott  Brothers,  71;  genealogy  of 
family,  72,  73;  spends  summer  of 
1852  at  Fewacres,  73;  letters  of,  to 
Abby  Hamlin,  74,  75;  in  law  office 
of  John  Cutler  at  Farmington,  78; 
his  view  of  traditional  law,  78 ;  stud- 
ies German  and  other  languages, 
78,  79;  not  a  linguist,  79;  in  debat- 
ing society  at  Farmington,  79;  be- 
gins practice  of  law,  80;  law  re- 
porter on  the  "Times,"  80;  his 
dutiesin  the  law-office,  80-82, 85-89 ; 
interest  in  detective  stories,  87,  88; 
passes  examination  for  admission 
to  the  bar,  89,  90;  his  impressions  of 
the  law  and  lawyers,  92,  93;  other 
occupations  of,  at  this  time,  93; 
articles  on  capital  punishment  and 
woman  suffrage,  and  novels,  93,  94; 
views  on  woman  suffrage,  93,  105; 
of  Anti-Slavery  party,  98;  opposed 
to  compromise  on  the  slavery  ques- 
tion, 99,  104,  123;  believes  war  in- 
evitable, 100,  104,  105;  letter  to 
cousin  on  trip  to  Georgia,  100-02; 
has  always  adhered  to  principle  of 
government  by  the  many,  104-06; 
desires  to  go  to  Kansas,  104-06; 
letter  giving  key  to  his  political 
principles,  105,  106;  his  description 
of  enthusiasm  for  Fremont,  107-10; 
his  description  of  election  in  1856, 
110-12;  letter  to  his  cousin  on  be- 
coming twenty  years  of  age,  113, 
114;  personal  appearance  at  twenty. 
114;  his  ambition,  114,  115;  his 
working  habits,  1 15 ;  his  recreations, 
115;  his  account  of  a  tramp  near 
the  Hudson,  116,  117;  member  of 
the  Linden,  117;  his  reading  and 
composing  habits,  118,  119;  called 
cold-blooded,  119;  his  views  on  sym- 


pathy, 119;  a  mystic  and  a  ration- 
alist, 120;  his  views  on  the  Bible,  120, 
127,  173,  314,  368,  369,  447-49, 
460-62;  marriage,  121;  honeymoon 
vacation,  121;  takes  cottage  at 
Fifty-fourth  St.,  122;  removes  to 
State  St.,  Brooklyn,  122;  birth  of 
son  Lawrence,  122;  his  home  a 
happy  one,  122,  123;  aspirations  for 
the  ministry  rekindled,  123;  con- 
templates removing  to  Boston,  123, 
124;  joins  Brooklyn  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association,  124;  interest 
in  ethical  and  spiritual  problems, 
124,  125;  his  attitude  toward  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  125-27;  change  in 
religious  views,  127;  his  view  of  Jesus 
and  of  God,  127,  170,  450,  462; 
prays  for  his  brother  Edward,  131, 
132;  his  ministerial  ambitions,  132- 
36. 

Leaves  the  law  and  goes  into  the 
ministry,  136,  139;  his  father's  at- 
titude toward  his  ministerial  as- 
pirations, 136-39;  his  reverence  for 
his  father,  141;  his  indebtedness  to 
his  father,  142;  advice  of  father  to, 
on  attitude  toward  critics,  156; 
foundations  of  his  theological  think- 
ing and  his  religious  experience  laid 
by  father,  159;  religious  counsel  of 
his  father,  159-63;  length  of  his 
sermons,  160;  certain  principles  of 
his  preaching,  162;  views  on  in- 
debtedness, 163;  religious  influence 
of  his  father  upon,  163-72;  his  views 
on  the  supremacy  of  the  law  and  the 
freedom  of  the  will,  164;  begins 
course  of  study  for  the  ministry,  173; 
his  study  of  the  Bible,  173-75;  be- 
gins preaching  at  Wilton,  Maine, 
175-80;  his  method  of  preparation 
for  the  pulpit,  177-80,  315-18; 
visits  New  York,  180;  hears  Lin- 
coln's Cooper  Union  Speech,  180, 
181;  in  search  of  a  parish,  180-83; 
accepts  parish  in  Terre  Haute,  183- 
85;  ordination,  185,  186;  organizes 
Bible  class  at  Terre  Haute,  189; 
division  in  his  church,  193;  birth  of 
daughter,  193;  domestic  manage- 
ment, 193-98;  contributes  to  East- 
ern press,  194;  gives  Commence- 
ment address  at  Female  College, 
195;  chaplain  and  teacher  at  Female 


498 


INDEX 


College,  196;  views  on  preacher's 
attitude  toward  politics  in  his  ser- 
mons, 202;  preaches  sermon  on 
slavery,  203-06;  tries  to  increase 
attendance  at  prayer-meetings,  206; 
attitude  toward  attempt  to  cause 
division  in  church,  206-08;  his  ac- 
tion after  the  firing  on  Fort  Sumter, 
208,  209 ;  takes  vacation  in  the  East, 
210;  suffers  from  cat-bite,  210;  re- 
ceives call  to  Meriden,  Conn.,  but 
declines  to  accept,  211,  212;  receives 
testimonial  from  congregation,  212, 
213;  joins  Loyal  League,  214; 
preaches  sermons  on  slavery  and 
emancipation,  215-18;  on  trip  to 
Lake  Superior,  219;  discourage- 
ment at  lack  of  spiritual  life  in  his 
church,  220;  his  spiritual  purpose 
strengthened  by  discouragement, 
221;  feels  himself  pastor  as  well  as 
preacher,  221;  pastoral  experiences 
of,  222-27;  change  in  preaching  of, 
227-30;  given  money  for  vacation, 
230,  232;  resigns  pastorate  at  Terre 
Haute,  232,  243,  244. 

Article  of,  on  reconstruction,  in 
the  "New  Englander,"  239-42; 
elected  Corresponding  Secretary  of 
the  Union  Commission,  243;  his 
visit  to  Tennessee,  244-51;  his  tasks 
on  the  Commission,  251,  260-72;  in 
work  of  moral  reconstruction  in  the 
South,  256;  leaves  Terre  Haute,  257; 
letters  from  Washington  and  Rich- 
mond, 257,  258;  elected  general 
secretary  of  United  Commission, 
262;  duties  as  secretary,  264;  paper 
on  Education  and  Religion,  268;  his 
principle  that  Christianity  is  more 
than  denominationalism,  268;  re- 
ceives two  calls  to  the  ministry, 
278;  accepts  call  to  New  York 
church,  279,  280;  collects  money  to 
pay  off  church  debt,  281,  282;  con- 
tinues to  fill  office  of  Secretary  of 
Freedmen's  Union  Commission,  281, 
283,  284;  installed  as  pastor,  282; 
his  pastorate  of  the  New  England 
Church,  282-95;  sermons  and  stud- 
ies, 284-86;  writes  book  reviews  for 
"Harper's  Monthly  Magazine," 
285;  contracts  to  write  a  Life  of 
Christ  285,  308;  daily  habits  of 
work  and   recreation,  285;  his  de- 


scription of  saloon  conditions  and 
haunts  of  vice  in  New  York  City, 
286-90;  goes  to  Europe  and  returns 
with  body  of  parishioner's  daughter, 
292-95;  resigns  pastorate  of  New 
England  church,  295;  moves  to 
Cornwall,  296,  300;  discouragement 
of,  296;  writes  history  of  Beecher 
case,  306,  307;  edits  sermons  of 
Beecher,  307;  contributes  to  "Har- 
per's Magazine,"  308;  question  of  his 
denomination,  309;  Laicus,  or  A 
Layman  s  Story,  309;  other  pub- 
lications of,  310,  311;  as  minister  of 
Presbyterian  church  at  Cornwall, 
312-18;  his  method  of  preparing 
sermons  and  addresses,  315-18; 
builds  house  at  Cornwall-on-Hud- 
son,  319;  description  of  his  estate  at 
Cornwall,  319,  320;  his  life  at  Corn- 
wall, 320^22;  his  editorship  of  the 
"Illustrated  Christian  Weekly," 
322-25;  writes  for  "Christian  Un- 
ion" and  "Independent,"  331;  be- 
comes associate  editor  of  the 
"Christian  Union,"  332-35;  changes 
in  "Union"  introduced  by,  335;  his 
policy  in  conduct  of  the  "Union," 
336. 

Invited  to  act  as  temporary  pas- 
tor of  Plymouth  Church,  354,  355; 
accepts  permanent  pastorate,  356, 
357;  opposition  to  his  appointment, 
357-59;  portrait  of,  as  pastor,  359, 
360;  relation  to  trustees  of  Ply- 
mouth Church,  361;  secures  an 
associate  pastor  and  assistants, 
364-66;  introduces  Sunday  evening 
lectures  in  church,  367,  368;  pub- 
lication of  his  lectures,  308;  his  ser- 
mons at  Plymouth  Church.  370-72, 
377-83;  the  spirit  of  Plymouth 
Church  under,  372-75;  work  on 
"The  Outlook,"  375,  376;  daily 
habits,  377,  378;  his  health,  383-85; 
resignation  of  pastorate,  385-88. 

Studies  labor  problem,  390-96; 
longs  for  opportunity  to  engage  in 
work  of  reformation,  396;  articles, 
addresses,  and  editorials  on  the 
industrial  problem,  396-409;  his 
solution  of  the  industrial  problem, 
409-16;  his  political  beliefs,  420-22; 
supports  Blair  Bill,  422,  423;  speaks 
at  conferences  of  Southern  Educa- 


INDEX 


499 


tional  Commission,  423,  424;  other 
addresses  of,  on  the  race  problem, 
424,  425;  his  attitude  on  the  Indian 
question  and  on  Indian  education, 
425-29;  supports  St.  John,  430; 
makes  a  call  for  a  new  party,  431; 
reforms  demanded  by,  431,  441;  is 
an  international  bimetallist,  432; 
opposes  Bryan,  433;  his  attitude  on 
the  Venezuela  controversy,  435, 436; 
his  attitude  on  the  Spanish-Ameri- 
can War,  437,  438;  statement  of,  re- 
garding barbarism  and  civilization, 
438;  his  attitude  toward  men  of 
wealth  and  big  business,  439;  his  at- 
titude as  regards  Government  con- 
trol of  railways,  mines,  etc.,  and 
forms  of  business,  440-43;  a  sym- 
pathetic interpreter  of  pacific  rev- 
olution in  American  government, 
445;  has  faith  in  fellow-men,  445, 
446;  his  state  of  mind  in  1876,  447- 
50;  gives  sermon  at  Vassar  College, 
451,  452;  gives  series  of  religious 
lectures  at  Wellesley  College,  452; 
delivers  course  of  lectures  on  Bible 
controversy,  454;  his  open-minded- 
ness,  458;  becomes  a  radical  evolu- 
tionist, 458-62;  change  in  his  reli- 
gious views  and  life,  462-66;  his 
statement  about  the  Great  First 
Cause,  464;  on  creed  commission, 
471,  472;  not  a  Universalist,  472;  his 
part  in  the  missionary  controversy, 
474-77;  his  interpretation  of  mis- 
sionary spirit,  478,  479;  description 
of  the  room  in  which  he  writes,  487, 
488;  present  age  and  activities  of, 
490;  his  friends,  490,  491;  his  idea  of 
death  and  resurrection,  491 ;  the  past 
and  the  future  to,  491-93;  on  self- 
approval,  492. 

Abbott,  Phoebe,  sister  of  Lyman's 
grandfather,  72. 

Abbott,  Sallucia,  5. 

Abbott,  Samuel,  uncle  of  Lyman,  his 
school  at  Little  Blue,  3,  5. 

Abbott,  Sarah,  sister  of  Lyman's 
grandmother,  72. 

Abbott,  Waldo,  116,  117,  122. 

Abbott,  Mrs.,  mother  of  Lyman,  death, 
3,  23;  extract  from  letter  of,  15. 

Abbott  Brothers,  law-firm,  estab- 
lished, 71;  Lvman  Abbott's  duties 
in,  78,  80-82,  85-89;  and  "Times" 


contempt  case,  82-85;  counsel  for 
the  "Times,"  85-87;  Lyman  with- 
draws from,  139. 

Abbott  School  for  Girls,  description  of, 
3,  4;  establishment  of,  23,  24;  habi- 
tation of,  24;  discontinued,  38;  a 
refuge  for  the  Abbott  boys,  41. 

Abolition  party,  97. 

Acting  in  1850,  49. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  440. 

Advertisements,  lies  in,  229-31. 

"Advertiser,"  the  Boston,  359. 

Alabama,  constitution  of,  443,  444. 

Alden,  Dr.  E.  K.,  472-77. 

Alderman,  President  Edwin  Anderson, 
276. 

Alford's  Greek  Testament,  173-75. 

America,  industrial  conditions  in,  394, 
395;  religious  changes  in,  453-86. 

American  Board  controversy,  469-77. 

American  Government,  change  in 
character  of,  444,  445. 

American  Missionary  Association,  271 . 

American  Tract  Society.  See  Tract 
Society. 

American  Union  Commission.  See 
Union  Commission. 

Amherst  College  in  1825,  46;  Jacob 
Abbott  tutor  and  professor  in,  46, 
142,  143. 

Anarchism,  402-04. 

Andover  controversy,  469-77. 

Andrew,  John  A.,  238,  265. 

Anti-Slavery  party,  97,  98,  103. 

Armstrong,  General  Samuel  C,  375, 
415,  427,  428. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  298,  299,  347. 

Arnold,  Thomas,  405. 

Art  in  1850,  49,  50. 

Austin,  Alfred,  quoted  on  debating  so- 
cieties, 48. 

"Back  to  Christ,"  482. 

Bacon,  Francis,  376. 

Bacon,  Leonard,  326. 

Banvard,  John,  his  panorama  of  the 
Mississippi,  28. 

Baptism,  224,  225. 

Barbarism  and  civilization,  438. 

Barnes,  Albert,  129. 

Bamum,  P.  T.,  nms  free  show  at  Ho- 
boken,  25;  his  Museum,  27,  28;  in- 
troduced Jenny  Lind  to  America, 
28;  a  bom  advertiser,  29;  brought 
Julien  to  America,  29. 


500 


INDEX 


Barton,  Dr.  James  L.,  480. 

Beecher,  Catherine,  14-i. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  pioneer  in 
church  missionary  work,  37;  his 
trial,  62,  63;  of  Anti-Slavery  party, 
98,  99;  scouts  idea  of  war,  loi;  Ab- 
bott intimate  with,  123;  Abbott's  at- 
titude toward,  125-27;  effectiveness 
of  his  evangelistic  preaching,  129, 130; 
his  prayer-meetings,  130, 131;  length 
of  his  sermons,  160;  his  theology, 
169;  consulted  by  Abbott  as  to 
course  of  study  for  the  ministry, 
173;  his  references  in  preaching  to 
phrenology,  174;  a  dramatic  orator, 
220;  champion  of  cause  of  Union 
Commission,  265;  case  of,  written 
by  Lyman  Abbott,  306,  307;  his  ser- 
mons edited  by  Abbott,  307;  death, 
317,  352;  his  connection  with  the 
"Independent,"  326-28;  editor  of 
the  "Christian  Union,"  328,  330- 
45;  conspiracy  against,  331;  corre- 
spondence with  Lawson  Valentine, 
344;  resigns  editorship  of  "Chris- 
tian Union,"  345;  sells  interest  in 
"Christian  Union,"  345,  346;  a 
great  orator,  351;  supports  Cleve- 
land, 430;  an  individualist  of  the  old 
school,  440;  his  interest  in  social 
problems,  478. 

Beecher,  Dr.  Lyman,  60,  129,  478, 
481. 

Beecher,  Mrs.,  358. 

Belmont,  August,  418. 

Benauly,  nom  de  -plume,  93. 

Bergson,  Henri,  60. 

Bible,  the,  Abbott's  views  of,  120,  127, 
173,  314,  368,  369,  447-49,  460-62; 
Abbott's  study  of,  17.3-75;  an  early 
nineteenth  century  view  of,  447; 
agitation  concerning  authority  of, 
454;  as  affected  by  Darwdn's  theory 
of  the  descent  of  man,  456-66. 

Bible  class,  organized  at  Terre  Haute 
by  Abbott,  189. 

Bible  Society,  American  and  Rich- 
mond, 259. 

Big  business,  439,  442. 

Blaine,  James  G.,  430. 

Blair  Bill,  the,  422,  423. 

Bliss,  Howard  S.,  364-66. 

Bloomingdale  in  1850,  25. 

Booth,  Edwin,  26. 

Booth,  Mary  Louise,  306. 


Booth,  Senator  Newton,  of  California, 

439. 
Borrow,  William,  304. 
Boston,  1. 

Bowdoin  College  in  1818,  45,  46. 
Bowen,  Henry  C,  opens  way  to  parish 

for   Abbott,    183;   publisher   of  the 

"Independent,"  328. 
Brady,  James  T.,  91. 
Briggs,  Charles  A.,  453-55. 
Broadway  Tabernacle,  280,  281,  283. 
Brockton,    New    York,   communistic 

society  at,  405. 
Brook  Farm,  Mass.,  405. 
BrookljTi  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation, 124. 
Brooks,  Phillips,  264,  365,  485. 
Brown,  John,  raid  of,  233. 
Brunswick,  Maine,  38. 
Brussels,  292-94. 
Bryan,  William  J.,  432. 
Buchanan,  President  James,  106,  201. 
Buchner,  Fried  rich,  449. 
Budington,  Dr.  William  I.,  242. 
Bull  Run,  battle  of,  214. 
Burgess,  John  W.,  on  negro  suffrage, 

237,  238. 
Burton,  W.  E.,  26. 
Bushnell,  Horace,  466. 
Business  as  a  profession  in  1850,  49; 

big,  439,  442;  Government  control 

of,  442. 
Busteed,  Dick,  90,  91. 
Butler,  Benjamin  F.,  234. 
Butter  Hill,  299. 
Butternuts,  the,  214. 

Calvin,  his  Institutes,  174. 

Calvinism,  128,  129,  148,  164,  165. 

Camps  of  negroes  and  of  whites,  234. 

Capitalism,  889. 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  418. 

Cary,  English  missionary,  128. 

Central  Park  in  1850,  25. 

Charleston,  So.  Carolina,  effect  of  Lin- 
coln's election  in,  200. 

Chase,  S.  P.,  98,  204. 

Child  labor  laws,  413. 

Christian  Commission,  the,  242. 

"Christian  Union,"  the,  63,  141,  309; 
converted  from  the  "Church  Un- 
ion," 328;  Mr.  Beecher  as  editor  of, 
328,  330;  prosperity  of,  330;  de- 
cline of,  331,  332;  Abbott  becomes 
associate    editor  of,    170,    332-35; 


INDEX 


501 


changes  in,  335;  purpose  of  Abbott 
in  conducting,  336;  size  and  circula- 
tion of,  337 ;  "  Aunt  Patience  Depart- 
ment" of,  338,  339;  further  changes 
in,  and  development  into  "The  Out- 
look," 339,  348-50;  controlled  by 
Lawson  Valentine,  344-46;  de- 
nounced by  socialist,  398;  non-par- 
tisan, 430.  See  Outlook. 

Christian  Union  Council,  305. 

Christian  unity,  483. 

Christianity,  and  denominationalism, 
268;  larger  than  all  churches,  347; 
and  socialism,  408. 

Christy's  Minstrels,  27,  28. 

Church,  the,  democratic  movement  in, 
478;  takes  active  part  in  social  prob- 
lems, 478;  missionary  work  in,  479. 

Church  of  the  Pilgrims,  283. 

"Church  Union,"  the,  328. 

Churches,  in  New  York  in  1850,  37; 
federation  of,  170;  in  Terre  Haute 
in  1860, 180, 187, 190-93;  the  need  of. 
in  the  reconstructed  South,  239-42; 
establishment  of  freedmen's  schools 
by,  271;  at  Cornwall,  311,  312,  489; 
statement  of  Federal  Council  of, 
regarding  social  creed,  417;  are 
working  organizations,  480. 

CivilizatioQ  and  barbarism,  438. 

Clarke,  Dr.  N.  G.,  473. 

Clarke,  Dr.  William  Newton,  462,  485. 

Clay,  Henry,  95,  99,  104. 

Cleveland,  Grover,  430;  his  Venezuela 
message,  435. 

Code  Barbarian,  157,  158. 

Co-education  of  races,  269-71. 

College,  object  of,  in  1850,  49;  life  in, 
in  1850,  56. 

Colonnade  Row,  24,  157. 

Combe,  his  Phrenology,  174. 

Commission.  See  Christian,  Sanitary, 
Union. 

Communion,  the,  172. 

Communism,  405. 

Comparative  religion,  study  of,  481, 
482. 

Compromise,  of  1850,  95;  Missouri,  95. 

Compromises  on  the  slavery  question 
proposed,  200,  201. 

Concert  hall  in  New  York  City,  scene 
in,  288. 

Congregational  churches,  ordination 
in,  185;  the  calling  of  a  council  of, 
185;  infant  baptism  in,  224;  in  New 


York  City,  280,  281 ;  National  Coun- 
cil of,  470,  471;  new  creed  for,  470- 
72. 

"Congregational  Herald,"  the,  208. 

Congregational  Home  Missionary  So- 
ciety, 478. 

"Congregationalist,"  the,  230,  232, 
286. 

Congregationalists,  their  view  of  the 
Last  Supper,  172;  their  view  of  the 
Bible,  447. 

Controversies,  religious,  a  matter  of 
words,  161;  Andover  and  American 
Board,  469-77. 

Conversions,  religious,  465,  466. 

Conybeare  and  Howson,  their  Life  and 
Letters  of  Paul,  174,  175. 

Cook,  Joseph,  450. 

Cooperation  in  Southern  schools,  265- 
67. 

Copperheads,  234. 

Corner-stone  The,  147,  148,  150,  168, 
171. 

Cornwall  and  Cornwall-on-Hudson, 
New  York,  Abbott  visits,  on  a  walk, 
117;  Abbott  moves  to,  295,  296; 
description  of,  299, 300;  Presbyterian 
church  at,  311,  312;  Abbott  builds 
house  at,  319,  320;  at  the  present 
time,  488-90. 

Corporations,  399,  400,  439. 

Council,  Congregational,  365,  470, 
471. 

Cousin,  summer,  72. 

Creation,  the,  463. 

Crime,  468. 

Crosby,  Dr.  Howard,  51,  52. 

Crosby,  John  Sherman,  409. 

Cuba,  the  freeing  of,  436-38. 

Currency  in  New  York  in  1850,  40. 

Curry,  Dr.  J.  L.  M..  276. 

Curtis.  George  William,  306. 

Cutler,  Clara,  aunt  of  Lyman,  death 
of  her  husband,  5,  6;  Christianity 
of,  6;  a  mother  to  Abbott,  41. 

Cutler,  John,  brother-in-law  of  Aunt 
Clara,  78,  80. 

Cuyler,  Dr.,  25. 

Daguerreotypes,  53. 

Darwin,  Charles,  347,  456,  458,  459. 

Dawes,  H.  L.,  200,  428. 

Dawes  Bill,  the,  428. 

Death,  491. 

Debating,  79,  117,  124. 


502 


INDEX 


Delmonico's,  39. 

Democracy,  410,  412,  418,  420.  446, 
466,  478. 

Denominational  journals,  329,  483. 

Denominationalism,  and  Christianity, 
268;  Abbott's  idea  of,  309. 

Dickens,  Charles,  57,  410. 

Direct  primary,  Abbott's  views  of,  105. 

Dogma,  149. 

Donald,  Dr.  E.  Winchester,  366. 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  96. 

Draper,  John  W.,  Professor  of  chem- 
istry, 52,  53. 

Dred  Scott  decision,  96. 

Drinking  and  drunkenness,  31,  32. 

Drummond,  Henry,  460. 

Drury  Lane  Theater  Orchestra,  29. 

Dummer,  Gorham,  72. 

"Eagle,"  the  Brooklyn,  369,  371. 

Eddy,  Mrs.,  458. 

Education,  in  the  South,  after  the 
War,  239-42,  265-77;  public,  rela- 
tion of,  to  organized  religion,  268; 
industrial,  412-15,  480;  of  the  In- 
dians, 428,  429.   See  Schools. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  58-61,  285. 

Election  in  New  York  City  in  1856 
110-12. 

Elv,  Professor  R.  T.,  392. 

Elysian  Fields,  Hoboken,  P.  T.  Bar- 
num's  show  at,  25. 

Emancipation,  reasons  for,  215,  216. 

Emancipation  Proclamation,  233,  236, 
254. 

Engineering,  not  a  profession  in  1850, 
49. 

Episcopal  Church,  trials  in,  456;  a 
working  organization,  480. 

Eucken,  Rudolf,  286. 

Eucleian  Society  at  New  York  Univer- 
sity, 47. 

"Evangelist,"  the  Maine,  124. 

Everlasting  punishment,  theory  of, 
469,  473-77. 

Evolution,  doctrine  of,  168;  its  effect 
on  religious  thought,  456-66. 

Excise  Law  of  1866,  286-88. 

Extemporaneous  speech,  48,  117,  178, 
315-18,  376,  382. 

Fall  of  man,  the,  458,  459. 
Farmington,    Maine,    2,    5,    22,    73; 

church   at,    15-18;   Abbott   in   law 

ofl5ce  at,  78. 


Federal  Council  of  Churches,  aflSrma- 

tion  of  social  creed  by,  417. 
Federation  of  Churches,  483. 
Feudalism,  389. 
"Fewacres,"  8,  73,  74,  134,  136,  139, 

159;  theological  seminary,  159-86. 
Field,    David    Dudley,    his    Code    of 

Civil  Procedure,  81. 
Finney,  Dr.  Charles  G.,  60,  129,  134, 

220. 
Fire-proof  building,  the  first  of  any 

size  in  New  York  Citv,  304. 
Fisk,  General  Clinton  B".,  270,  276. 
Fisk  University,  274. 
Fiske.  John,  460. 

Five  Points,  New  York  City,  33,  36. 
Force  Bill,  the,  255. 
Forests,  441. 
Forrest,  Edwin,  26. 
Fort  Sumter,  assault  on,  208. 
Foster,  John,  his  essay  on  Decision  of 

Character,  60. 
Free  coinage  of  silver,  432,  433. 
Freedmen,  234. 

Freedmen's  schools,  265.   See  Schools. 
Freedmen's  Societies,   251,   257,   260, 

262,  275.   See  Union  Commission. 
Freedom  of  the  will,  the  question  of, 

59,  60,  164. 
Freeman,  Alice,  474. 
Fremont,  J.  C,  106-12,  255. 
Frissell,  Dr.  H.  B.,  275,  415. 
Froude,  J.  A.,  149. 
Froude,  R.  H.,  149. 
Fugitive  Slave  Law,  95. 
Funerals  in  France,  293. 

Gambling-houses,  36. 

Genius,  340. 

George,  Henry,  408,  420,  438. 

Georgia  before  the  Civil  War,  1 00-02. 

Gilman,  Ellen,  wife  of  Austin  Abbott, 

72. 
Girls,  education  of,  24,  144. 
Gladden,  Dr.  Washington,  484. 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  48. 
God,  Abbott's  views  of,  127,  462-64; 

Jacob  Abbott's  teaching  concerning 

the  nature  of,  167-70. 
Gompers,  Samuel,  418. 
Gordon,  Dr.  George  A.,  484. 
Gosling's,  a  Broadway  restaurant,  39. 
Gospels,  as  guide  to  life,  189. 
Gottheil,  Dr.  Gustav,  409. 
Gough,  John  B.,  220. 


INDEX 


503 


Grant,  U.  S.,  252. 

Gray,  Senator  George,  of  Delaware, 

435. 
Great   Britain,    industrial   conditions 

in,  393,  394;  her  controversy  with 

Venezuela,  434-36. 
Great  Debate,  The,  475,  476. 
Greeley,  Horace,  as  editor,  80,  81;  on 

the  Secession,  200. 
Greenwich  Village,  3,  24. 

Habberton,  John,  337. 

Hackett,  Father,  176,  177. 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  434,  485. 

Hall,  A.  Oakey,  90. 

Hall,  Charles  Cuthbert,  481. 

Halliday,  S.  B.,  364. 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  his  lectures  on 
metaphysics,  174,  175. 

Hamlin,  Abby,  wife  of  Lyman,  72;  at 
Fewacres  in  summer  of  1852,  73,  74; 
letters  of  Lyman  to,  74,  75;  mar- 
riage, 121.  See  Abbott,  Abby. 

Hamlin,  Dr.  Cyrus,  480. 

Hamlin,  Hannibal,  father  of  Lyman 
Abbott's  wife,  72,  218. 

Hampton  Institute,  275,  415. 

Hand,  Daniel,  271. 

Harlem,  25. 

Harper,  Fletcher,  302,  305-08. 

Harper,  Fletcher,  Jr..  publisher,  82-84. 

Harper,  Jarnes,  24,  302,  305. 

Harper,  John.  302. 

Harper,  Wesley,  302. 

Harper  &  Brothers,  history  of,  301- 
07;  periodical  publications  of,  302, 
306. 

"Harper's  Bazaar,"  organization  of, 
306. 

"Harper's  Monthly  Magazine,"  Ab- 
bott writes  book  reviews  for,  285, 
297;  establishment  of,  306. 

"Harper's  New  Monthly  Magazine," 
38. 

"Harper's  Weekly,"  history  of,  306. 

Harris,  Dr.  Samuel,  462. 

Haverstraw  Bay,  298. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  457. 

Haymarket  tragedy  in  Chicago,  400. 

Henry,  C.  S.,  Professor  of  philosophy, 
52-56. 

Highlands  of  the  Hudson,  298,  299, 
319. 

Hildesheim,  burial  place  of  Abbv 
Abbott,  77. 


Hill,  Chancellor  Walter  Barnard.  276. 

Hillis,  Dr.  Newell  Dwight,  385,  479. 

Hitchcock,  Dr.,  453. 

Hoar,  E.  R.,  quoted,  55. 

HofiFman,  Judge  Murray,  91. 

Home  Heathen,  articles  on,  396. 

Homestead  Act,  237. 

Homiletics,  175. 

Hopkins,  Dr.  Mark,  473. 

Howard,  General  O.  O.,  257,  264,  275. 

Hudson  River,  298,  299,  319. 

Hull  House,  393. 

Hunter,  Deacon,  17. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  347. 

"Illustrated  Christian  Weekly,"  the, 
322-25,  331,  335. 

Immigration  laws,  413. 

"Independent,"  the,  213,  288,  326, 
327,  329,  331. 

Indian,  question,  425-28;  education, 
428,  429. 

Indifference  in  religious  matters,  224. 

Individualism,  a  characteristic  of  bar- 
barism, 236,  238,  440. 

Industrial  condition.  See  Labor  prob- 
lem. 

Industrial  education,  412-15,  480. 

Industrial  Education  Society  of  Bos- 
ton, 414. 

Industrial  liberty,  410. 

Industrial  schools,  414. 

Industrial  systems,  389. 

International  arbitration,  434. 

International  Workingmen's  Associa- 
tion, 400,  401. 

Inter-State  Commerce  Bill,  441. 

J.  B.  Ford  &  Co.,  328,  331. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  445. 

Jesus  Christ,  Abbott's  views  of,  127, 
450;  Jacob  Abbott's  teaching  con- 
cerning the  nature  of,  167-70;  as  he 
appears  to  the  layman,  189;  the 
miraculous  birth  and  the  resurrec- 
tion of,  456;  study  of  his  life,  481, 
482. 

Jewett,  Rev.  Merrick  A.,  183,  190-93, 
206. 

Johnson,  Andrew,  his  attitude  on 
negro  suffrage,  238;  utterance  of, 
after  the  assassination  of  Lincoln, 
253;  as  President,  255. 

Johnson,  A.  E.,  Professor  of  Latin,  52. 

Journalism  in  1850,  49,  50. 


504 


INDEX 


Judges,  Abbott's  impressions  of,  92. 

Judson,  Dr.,  481. 

Julien,  L.  A.,  composer  and  leader, 

29-31. 
Juries,   Abbott's   impressions   of,   92, 

93. 

Keble,  John,  149. 

Keene,  Laura,  26. 

King,  President  Henry  Churchill,  485. 

Kingslev,  Charles,  149. 

Kirk,  Dr.  E.  N.,  173,  175,  220. 

Kirkland,  Chancellor  James  Hampton, 

277. 
Knoxville,  Tenn.,  271. 

Labor  problem,  389-^00;  remedies 
proposed,  401-09;  Abbott's  solution 
of,  409-16;  progress  in  solution  of, 
416-19. 

Labor-Unionism,  405,  406,  412,  416- 
18. 

Laissez-faire,  404,  405. 

Lake  Mohonk  Conferences,  425,  427- 
29,  434,  437. 

Lane,  Henry  S.,  199. 

Last  Supper,  the,  171,  172. 

Latin,  structure  of  language  learned 
from,  11. 

Law,  and  lawyers,  Abbott's  impres- 
sions of,  92,  93;  supremacy  of,  164. 

Learned  professions  in  1850,  49. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  443. 

Lectures,  Sunday  evening,  at  Ply- 
mouth Church,  367-70. 

Lee,  Robert  E.,  216. 

Liars  and  advertisers,  229-31. 

Liberty,  religious  and  civil,  240;  in- 
dustrial, 410. 

License  Law  of  New  York  State,  286. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  98,  107;  his  Cooper 
Union  speech,  180,  181;  effect  in 
Charleston  of  hi.s  election,  200;  elec- 
tion of,  regretted  by  some  Republi- 
cans, 200;  election  of,  left  the  coun- 
try fog-bound,  202;  assassination  of, 
252;  as  a  statesman,  253,  254;  his 
reconstruction  policy,  254,  255; 
funeral,  257;  quoted  on  coopera- 
tion of  head  and  hands,  413;  on  the 
laborer,  415. 

Lind,  Jenny,  28,  29. 

Linden,  the,  literary  and  social  so- 
ciety, 117,  124. 

Literature  in  1850,  49,  50. 


Little  Blue,  Jacob  Abbott's  home  in 
Maine,  3;  used  as  school,  3,  5,  9. 

London,  slum  conditions  in,  392,  393. 

Loomis,  Elias,  Professor  of  mathe- 
matics, 52. 

Louisiana,  State  University  of?  address 
before,  425. 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  406. 

Lowell  Institute  of  Boston,  368,  454. 

Loyal  League,  214. 

Lyon,  Mary,  144. 

Mabie,  Hamilton  W.,  339. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  48,  57,  76,  118. 

Macready,  W.  C,  26. 

Maine,  Sir  Henry,  461. 

Mann,  Horace,  50. 

Mansel,  his  Limits  of  Religious 
Thought,  174. 

Manual  Training,  414. 

Marine  Court,  82. 

Marysville,  Tenn.,  271. 

Mason,  Lowell,  50. 

Materialism,  449. 

Matthiessen,  E.  A.,  348. 

Maudsley,  Sir  Henry,  449. 

Maurice,  J.  F.  D.,  149,  329. 

McCarthy,  Florence,  judge,  82-84. 

McFadyen,  Dr.  John  E.,  311. 

McGlynn,  Dr.  Edward,  409. 

Mclver.  Dr.  Charles  D.,  276. 

McKim,  J.  Miller,  262. 

McKinley,  William,  432. 

Medical  schools  in  New  York  in  1850, 
45. 

Men  and  Religion  Movement,  483. 

Mercantile  Library,  New  York,  49. 

Mercer  St.  in  1850,  36. 

Mercer  Street  Presbyterian  Church, 
37. 

Meriden,  Conn.,  211. 

Merriam,  George  S.,  332. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  193,  196,  405,  482. 

Mines,  393,  394,  409,  441. 

Mingins,  George  J.,  263. 

Miraculous  birth,  the,  and  the  resur- 
rection, 456. 

Missionaries,  foreign,  controversy  re- 
garding, 473-77;  increase  in,  477; 
their  work  has  been  revolutionized, 
480,  481;  medical,  480. 

Missionary  effort.  South  not  regarded 
as  proper  field  for,  267-69. 

Missionary  societies  in  1850,  37;  in 
the  South,  after  the  War,  274. 


INDEX 


505 


Missionary  spirit,   interpretation  of, 

479. 
Missouri  Compromise,  95. 
Mitchell,  John,  418. 
Monte  Carlo,  37. 
Moody,  Dwight  L.,  479. 
Moral  beauty  in  human  life,  165,  166. 
Moral  standards  in  1850,  31-37. 
Morality  and  religion,  167. 
Morgan.  J.  P.,  418,  419. 
Morgan,   Dr.,   Indian  Commissioner, 

429. 
Morse,  S.  F.  B.,  51. 
Morton,  Oliver  P.,  199,  208. 
"Morton  Street  Gazette,  The,"  157. 
Mount  Hermon,  school  for  boys  at,  479. 
Mount  Vernon  School,  144-47. 
Munger,  Dr.  Theodore  A.,  484. 
Murphy,  Edgar  Gardner,  276. 
Murray,  Dr.  W.  H.  H.,  295. 
Music  in  1850,  49,  50. 
Musical  institutes  in  1850,  50. 
Mystic  and  rationalist,  161. 

Nashville,  Tenn.,  271,  274. 

Nast,  Thomas,  306. 

National  Civic  Federation,  418. 

Nationality,  spirit  of,  in  the  United 
States,  275. 

Natural  affection,  166. 

Nebraska  Bill,  96. 

Negro,  religious  faith  of,  233;  pa- 
tience of,  233;  camps  of,  234;  con- 
dition of,  after  Emancipation  Proc- 
lamation, 236;  suffrage,  237;  the 
Blair  Bill,  422,  423;  the  Southern 
Educational  Commission,  423,  424; 
race  problem,  424,  425.  See  Educa- 
tion, Schools. 

Newburgh,  299;  Bay,  319. 

New  England  Church,  the,  282,  283, 
290-95. 

"New  Englander,"  the,  article  of  Ab- 
bott's in,  239. 

New  Harmony,  Penn.,  communistic 
society  at,  405. 

New  Lebanon,  New  York,  Shaker 
settlement  at,  405. 

New  Year's  Day  in  1850,  31. 

New  York,  home  of  Lyman  Abbott's 
father  in,  3,  24;  in  1850,  25-42; 
saloon  conditions  in,  286-90;  slum 
conditions  in,  392,  393. 

Newman,  F.  W.,  149. 

Newman,  John  Henry,  on  dogmatism. 


149  ;  his  criticism  of  the  Comer- 
Stone,  150;  Jacob  Abbott's  account 
of  a  visit  to,  151-55;  his  impres- 
sion of  Abbott's  visit,  155. 

Niblo's  Garden,  26. 

Nordhoff,  Charles,  his  The  Communis- 
tic Societies  of  the  United  States,  405. 

Normal  schools  in  1850,  50. 

Northfield,  school  for  girls  at,  479. 

Norton,  Colonel  Charles  L.,  337. 

Norivich,  Conn.,  22,  24. 

Noyes,  John  H.,  his  History  of  Ameri- 
can Socialism,  405. 

Oakley,  Judge  T.  J.,  91,  92. 

Obedience,  167. 

Ocean  trip  in  1868,  292. 

O'Conor,  Charles,  91,  97,  99. 

Ogden,  Robert  C,  276,  423. 

Olmsted,  Frederick  Law,  100. 

"One  fish-ball,"  40. 

One-price  system  introduced  by  A.  T. 
Stewart,  31. 

Oneida,  New  York,  communistic  so- 
ciety at,  405. 

Oratorio  Society,  New  Y''ork,  in  1850, 
28. 

Ordination,  185,  186. 

"Outlook,  The,"  the  name,  335,  350; 
editorial  conduct  of,  338;  develop- 
ment of,  from  the  "Christian  Un- 
ion," 339,  348-50,  375  n.;  editorial 
policy  of,  346,  347;  Abbott's  work 
on,  while  pastor,  375,  376;  quota- 
tions from,  on  industrial  and  politi- 
cal revolutions,  389  n.;  Roosevelt  on 
editorial  staff  of,  443.  See  "Christian 
Union." 

Paley,  Archdeacon,  484. 

Panoramas,  27,  28. 

Pantomimes,  27. 

Parish,  searching  for  a,  180-83. 

Park,  Edwards  A.,  469,  470. 

Parker,  Theodore,  104,  165,  169. 

Parker,  Dr.  Willard,  68. 

Pastor  and  preacher,  221-32. 

Pastorate,  attractions  of,  as  a  pro- 
fession, 279. 

Pastors,  two,  in  one  church,  365,  366; 
should  be  three,  in  large  church, 
367. 

Patton,  Dr.,  454. 

Payson,  Lewis,  252. 

Peabody,  George,  271. 


506 


INDEX 


Peabody  houses,  393. 

Pearson,  Bishop,  his  Exposition  of  the 
Creed,  58. 

Penology,  the  new,  468,  469. 

Perham's  Panorama,  27. 

Perkins,  George  W.,  418. 

Phelps,  Professor  Austin,  143,  379. 

Philippines,  the,  438. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  220. 

Philosophy,  as  taught  in  1850,  53-56. 

Phrenology,  study  of,  desirable  for 
religious  teacher,  174,  175. 

Pilgrim  Congregational  Church  in 
Harlem,  281. 

Plymouth  Church,  283;  Lyman  Ab- 
bott supported  by  Vaughan  in  pas- 
torate of,  62;  Sunday  Evening  Lec- 
tures at,  63, 367-70;  prayer-meetings 
at,  125,  130,  131;  under  Beecher, 
351,  352;  prayers  held  at,  for  life  of 
Beecher,  352-54;  Abbott  invited  to 
act  as  temporary  pastor  of,  354, 
355;  Abbott  appointed  permanent 
pastor  of,  356,  357 ;  opposition 
to  Abbott's  appointment  as  pastor 
of,  357-59;  organization  of,  360; 
trustees  of,  361;  charitable  work  of, 
361-63;  admission  to,  363;  work  of, 
363,  364;  two  pastors  in,  364-66; 
assistants  to  pastor  in,  366,  367; 
Abbott's  sermons  at,  370-72,  377- 
83;  the  spirit  of,  372-75;  resignation 
of  Abbott  from  pastorate  of,  385- 
88. 

Police  in  New  York  in  1850,  32-^6. 

Porter,  Horace,  366,  371,  372. 

Portland,  Maine,  279. 

Porto  Rico,  438. 

Postal  savings,  412. 

Pratt,  Captain,  428. 

Prayer-meetings,  at  Plvmouth  Church, 
125,  130,  131  ;  held  by  Edward 
Abbott  and  two  others,  132 ;  at 
Terre  Haute,  206;  for  life  of  Beecher, 
352-54. 

Pravers,  in  church  and  in  family,  17- 
19,  21,  22. 

Preacher  and  pastor,  221-32. 

Presbyterian  Church,  309,  311-14, 
453. 

Prison  reform,  sermon  on,  379,  380. 

Prize-ring  and  cock-pit,  scene  in,  288, 
289. 

Prcctor,  Senator  Redfield,  of  Ver- 
mont, 437. 


Professions,  learned,  in  1850,  49. 
Pro-Slavery  party,  97,  98,  103. 
Punishment,  468. 
Puritan  Sabbath,  15-19. 
Pusey,  E.  B.,  149,  151. 

Race  question,  defined,  425. 

Railways,  440-42. 

Rainsford,  Dr.  W.  S.,  pioneer  in 
church  missionary  work,  37. 

Rationalist  and  mystic,  161. 

Ravel  family,  the,  26. 

Raymond,  Henry  J.,  editor  of  the 
New  York  "Times,"  80-82. 

Raymond,  Rossiter  W.,  353,  364. 

Rebellion,  infamous  and  glorious,  215. 

Reclus,  Elisee,  397. 

Reconstruction,  the  problem  of,  235; 
whose  the  work?  235-38;  article  by 
Abbott  on,  in  the  "New  Englander," 
239-42;  work  of  Union  Commission 
in,  242,  243,  251;  as  it  would  have 
been  under  Lincoln,  254,  255. 

Reconstruction  Period,  256. 

Redemption,  Abbott's  views  of,  127. 

Refugees,  235. 

Religion,  and  morality,  167;  of  hu- 
manity, 167;  principles  of,  underlie 
republicanism,  240;  organized,  rela- 
tion of,  to  pubUc  education,  268; 
change  in  conception  of,  483,  484. 

Religious,  influences  which  surrounded 
Abbott  in  his  childhood,  15-22;  in- 
struction, Jacob  Abbott's  theory  of, 
147;  counsel  and  influence  and  be- 
liefs of  Jacob  Abbott,  159-72;  con- 
troversies, a  matter  of  words,  161; 
revolution,  447-86;  experiences,  466. 

Renan,  his  Life  of  Jesus,  482. 

Rensselaer  Polytechnic  School  of 
Troy,  50. 

Reporters,  Abbott's  impressions  of,  80. 

Republican  party,  division  of,  198. 

Reservation  system,  426,  427. 

Resurrection,  the,  456,  491. 

Retail  stores,  one-price  system  intro- 
duced into,  31. 

Revelation,  doctrine  of,  462. 

Revivals,  127-30,  465,  466. 

Rhodes,  James  Ford,  on  the  revival  of 
1858, 128;  on  negro  suffrage,  238  n.; 
on  the  assassination  of  Lincoln,  252. 

Richmond,  Va.,  Abbott  at,  257,  25S; 
conditions  in,  after  the  War,  258-60, 

Riot,  description  of,  33-36. 


INDEX 


507 


Robert  College,  480. 

Robinson,  Edward,  his  works  on  the 
Bible  and  Biblical  subjects,  173, 174. 

Rockefeller,  John  D.,  272. 

Rogers,  Parson,  16,  17,  20. 

Rolls,  otherwise  biscuits,  40. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  416,  442,  443. 

Root,  Ehhu,  434. 

Ross,  Frederick  A.,  quotation  from, 
190,  191. 

Roxbury,  1. 

Run-about,  an  invention  of  Jacob  Ab- 
bott, 4. 

Ryce,  Mr.,  184,  188,  204,  209,  230,  243. 

St.  Anthony's  Nose,  299. 

St.  George's  Church,  New  York  City, 
68,  69. 

St.  James's  Church,  Cambridge,  132. 

St.  John,  John  P.,  Prohibition  candi- 
date for  the  Presidency,  430. 

Saloon  conditions  in  New  York  City, 
286-90. 

Salvation  Army,  479,  480. 

Sanitary  Commission,  the,  242. 

School,  Uncle  Samuel's,  at  Farming- 
ton,  5,  9-13;  Uncle  Charles's,  at 
Norwich,  22;  the  Abbott,  23.  See 
Abbott  School. 

Schools,  in  1850,  public,  50,271,274; 
normal,  50;  industrial  and  vocation- 
al, 414. 

Schools  in  the  South,  the  need  of, 
after  the  War,  239-42;  sustained, 
wholly  or  in  part,  by  the  Union 
Commission,  265;  cooperation  in, 
265-67 ;  non-denominational,  267- 
69;  co-education  in,  269-71;  estab- 
lished in  Nashville  and  elsewhere, 
271;  established  by  churches,  271; 
public,  271,  274;  funds  established 
for,  271,  272;  opposition  to,  273. 

"Scripture  Truth,"  the,  466. 

Secession,  the,  the  North  ill  prepared 
for,  200;  compromises  suggested  as 
result  of,  200,  201. 

Secretary  of  religious  or  philanthropic 
society,  duties  of,  263,  264. 

Sectional  question,  the,  429,  430. 

Serfdom,  389. 

Sermons,  Parson  Rogers's,  17;  length 
of,  160;  Abbott's  method  of  produc- 
ing, 177-79,  284,  315-18,  377-83; 
political,  Abbott's  views  on,  202- 
06;  H.  W.  Beecher's,  307,  327;  first 


essential  of,  315,  316;  Abbott's,  at 
Plymouth  Church,  370-72,  377-83. 

Servant  problem  at  Terre  Haute,  196, 
197. 

Seward,  W.  H.,  98,  104,  201,  252. 

Shearman,  Thomas  G.,  111. 

Shedd,  Dr.,  453. 

Shepard,  Edward  M.,  372. 

Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law,  417. 

Sherman's  army,  259,  260. 

Short  ballot,  Abbott's  views  of,  105. 

Silliman,  Father,  314,  315. 

Simpson,  Bishop,  264. 

Sin  and  sins,  165-67,  457,  459. 

Single  tax,  408,  409. 

Skepticism,  224. 

Slater,  John  F.,  271. 

Slavery,  in  politics  before  the  War,  95- 
99,  103,  198;  as  seen  by  Abbott  on 
his  trip  to  Georgia,  100-02;  effect 
of,  on  political  parties,  198,  199; 
compromises  regarding,  at  the  time 
of  the  secession,  200,  201;  sermons 
against,  203-06,  215-18;  first  of 
industrial  systems,  389. 

Slaves.   See  Negroes. 

Sleighs  for  omnibuses,  in  1850,  26. 

Slum  conditions  in  New  York  and 
London,  392,  393. 

Smiley,  Albert  K.,  425,  434. 

Smith,  Adam,  404. 

Smyth,  Professor  Egbert  C,  473-76. 

Social  service,  spirit  in  which  it  is  ren- 
dered to-day,  484. 

Socialism,  State,  406-08. 

Socialist,  the  term,  407  n. 

South,  the,  before  the  War,  100-02; 
Abbott's  trip  to,  100-03;  attitude  of, 
on  the  problem  of  reconstruction, 
236,  237;  second  visit  of  Abbott  to, 
244-51;  work  of  Freedmen's  Socie- 
ties in,  251,  260-62;  cooperation  of 
men  and  women  of,  secured,  265-67; 
not  regarded  as  proper  field  for  mis- 
sionary effort,  267-69;  co-education 
in  schools  of,  269-71;  public  schools 
in,  271,  274;  opposition  to  schools  in, 
273;  the  new,  275. 

Southern  Educational  Commission, 
423. 

Spahr,  Charles  B.,  432. 

Spanish-American  War,  436-38. 

Spargo,  John,  407. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  168, 285, 449, 450, 458. 

Spingler  Institute,  24,  117. 


508 


INDEX 


Sports  in  1850,  11-13. 
Squatter  sovereignty,  198. 
Stage,  the,  in  1850,  "49. 
Stage-coaches  in  New  York  City  in 

1850,  26. 
Standard    Oil    Company,    education 

provided  by,  414,  442. 
Stanley,  A.  P.,  149. 
State  socialism,  406-08. 
Stephenson,  George,  440. 
Stewart,  A.  T.,  introduced  one-price 

system  into  retail  stores,  31. 
Stillman,  James,  346,  439. 
Storm  King,  117,  299. 
Storrs,  Dr.  Richard  Salter,  283. 
Stowe,  Calvin  E.,  173. 
Stowe,  H.  B.,  Uncle  Toms  Cabin,  96; 

quoted  on  prayer,  129. 
Strauss,  his  Life  of  Christ,  482. 
Street-walkers,  32. 
Student  Volunteer  Movement,  483. 
Suflfrage,   negro,   237,   238;  principles 

determining  condition  of,  242. 
Sumner,  Charles,  96,  237,  238. 
Sunday,  William  A.,  465. 
Sunday-School,  at  Terre  Haute,  226, 

227;  additions  to  churches  due  to, 

466. 
Supremacy  of  law,  164. 
Sweeney's,  New  York  restaurant,  39. 

Talmage,  T.  DeWitt,  48,  295. 

Taverns,  56. 

Teaching  in  1850,  49. 

Tennessee,  Abbott's  visit  to,  244-51. 

Terre  Haute,  Abbott  accepts  parish 
in,  183-85;  in  1860,  187,  188;  Ab- 
bott's pastorate  at,  188,  189,  203- 
32;  origin  and  development  of  Con- 
gregational church  at,  190-93;  Ab- 
bott's domestic  life  at,  193-98; 
threatened  division  in  church  at, 
193,  204,  207,  208;  state  of  feeling 
in,  regarding  slavery,  204;  Abbott 
receives  testimonial  of  congregation 
at,  212,  213. 

Theatres  and  plays  in  1850,  26,  27,  32. 

Theology,  of  185*0,  55;  Abbott's  read- 
ing in,  while  in  college,  58;  period 
of  restlessness  in,  148,  149;  incident 
connected  with  J.  H.  Newman  and 
Jacob  Abbott,  150-56;  Jacob  Ab- 
bott's, 164-72;  every  minister  should 
have  a,  175;  changes  in,  453-86. 

Thompson,  Dr.  Joseph  P.,  242, 283, 326. 


Tilton,  Theodore,  326,  328. 

"Times,"  the,  Abbott  law  reporter  on, 
80;  and  contempt  case,  84,  85;  Ab- 
bott Brothers  counsel  for,  85,  86; 
libel  suits  against,  86,  87. 

Titcomb,  Charles,  73. 

Titcomb,  Elizabeth,  wife  of  Vaughan 
Abbott,  72,  73. 

Titcomb,  John,  72. 

Titcomb,  John,  son  of  John,  73. 

Titcomb,  Mary,  73. 

Tobacco  Trust,  442. 

Total  depravity,  doctrine  of,  467,  468. 

Townsend's  Bible,  174. 

Toynbee  Hall,  393. 

Tract  Society,  American  and  Virginia, 
259. 

Tractarianism,  150. 

"Tractfe  for  the  Times,"  150. 

Trade  journals,  329. 

Trades-unions,  405,  406,  412,  416-18. 

Transportation  in  1850,  26. 

Traveling,  before  the  War  and  to-day, 
100-03. 

"Tribune,"  the  New  York,  374,  386, 
387. 

Trinity,  the,  169. 

Trudeau,  Dr.,  300. 

Trusts,  442,  443. 

Tuskegee  Institute,  415. 

Tyndall,  John,  347. 

Tyng,  Dr.  Stephen  H.,  68-70. 

Underground  railway,  95. 

Union,  the  new,  275. 

Union  Commission,  to  cooperate  in 
reconstruction,  242;  Abbott  elected 
Corresponding  Secretary  of,  243; 
character  of,  260,  261;  reorganiza- 
tion of,  261-63;  first  annual  report 
of,  265;  work  of,  260-72;  ceases  to 
exist,  272. 

Union  League  Club  of  New  York  City, 
265. 

Union  Theological  Seminary  of  New 
York  City,  453,  454. 

Unionist  party,  97,  103. 

Unions,  labor,  405,  406,  412,  416-18. 

Universalists,  472. 

University  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
Abbott  enters,  45;  as  it  was  in  1850, 
45-49;  curriculum  of,  in  1850,  51; 
teachers  in,  51-56;  college  life  in,  56, 
57;  prescribed  course  in,  57. 

Unreality  in  Christian  teaching,  223. 


INDEX 


509 


Valentine,  Lawson,  340-47,  350,  439. 

Vanderbilt  University,  274. 

Vassar  College,  sermon  at,  451,  452. 

Venezuela,  controversy  of  Great  Brit- 
ain with,  434-36. 

Vindictive  justice,  468. 

Violence,  as  a  remedy  for  industrial 
conditions,  401,  402. 

Virtue,  166. 

Vocational  schools,  414. 

Wages  system,  389. 
Walker,  Dr.  Francis  A.,  432. 
Walker,  Professor  Francis  G.,  405. 
Walker,  Dr.  George  Leon,  471. 
Wallacks,  the,  26. 
Warner,  S.  E.,  324,  325. 
Washington,    Booker   T.,    275,    276, 

415. 
Washington,  George,  299. 
Washingtonian  movement,  31. 
"Watchman,"  the,  258. 
Water  St.,  New  York  City,  36. 
Waterlow  houses,  393. 
Waterways,  441. 
Waverley,  Mass.,  121,  123. 
Wealth  439. 

Webster,  Daniel,  95,  99,  104,  327. 
Welfare  work,  302. 
Wellesley  College,  series  of  religious 

lectures   delivered   at,   by  Abbott, 

452. 
Wesley,  preaching  of,  129. 


West  Point,  299. 

Westminster  Confession  of  Faith,  314. 

Whitfield,  preaching  of,  129. 

Whittier,  John  G.,  485. 

Will,  the  question  of  the  freedom  of, 

59,  60,  164. 
Willard,  Emma,  144. 
Williamson,  Passmore,  124. 
Willis,  N.  P.,  299. 
Wilton,  Maine,  Abbott  preaches  in, 

175-80. 
Winslow,  Forbes,  449. 
Woman  suffrage,  Abbott's  views  on, 

93,  105. 
Women,  education  of,  24,  144. 
Wood,  Fernando,  mavor  of  New  York, 

25,  33. 
Woodbury,  Mrs.  Mary  Dana,  marries 

Lyman  Abbott's  father,  38. 
Words,  controversies  about,  161,  162. 
Writing-tablet,    invented    by    Jacob 

Abbott,  4. 

"Yankee,"  a  term  of  opprobrium  in 

Terre  Haute,  188. 
Yorkville  in  1850,  25. 
Young  Christian,   The,  20,   143,    147, 

148. 
Young  Men's   and  Young  Women's 

Christian  Associations,  22,  37,  124, 

479,  483. 

Zenker,  E.  V.,  402. 


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